Parallelism

By Abhishek Tomar on Aug 24, 2009 with Comments 0

You are now in the favorite zone of GMAT examiner. GMAT people likes to give as many question from this topic as possible. But good news here is that it is the easiest topic to learn. With the help of few rules you can perfect the art of answering correctly, sentences lying under this topic.

Now what is Parallelism?

Parallelism is a comparison of two or more parts of the sentence on equal terms. You have to make the structurally similar parts equal. Let see the demonstration of the parallel sentence:

The employees were upset by their low pay, poor working conditions and that they not have many outlets for their creativity.

Notice now in this example there are three comparable parts that upset the employees. Look at the structure of the first two parts – low pay and poor working condition – that seems similar pattern because here noun is modified by an adjective. But the third part is totally different from the other parts because it consist of clause, verb and object. In order to make the sentence correct we have to make all the parts similar in structure. This is how it is done:

The employees were upset by their low pay, poor working conditions, and limited creative outlets.

Their are many type of parallel structure and they may be simple and complex. The chart below provides you with the information how common the GMAT test the parallel structure