Parallel Grammatical Structures for Tables

Professional tables use parallel grammatical structures in each column. You probably encountered the word parallel in a geometry course a long time ago. Remember the parallelogram?

You have probably seen the concept in courses here at Virginia Tech also. Consider these examples:

• A mechanical engineering major is likely to be aware of parallelism control and parallelism tolerance.
• A building construction major knows that various parts of a building need to be parallel. (Imagine how annoying a staircase would be if the steps weren’t parallel.)
• A computer science or computer engineering major knows all about parallel processing.
• A finance major would be familiar with parallel portfolio optimization, parallel loans, and parallel markets.
• A business major may know about organizational parallelism, including parallel leadership and parallel learning.

In all these examples, the word parallel generally means that two or more things match in some way. That is essentially what parallelism means in a writing course as well.

In your table, all the cells in a column should use grammatical structures that match (in other words, parallel grammatical structures).

• If you start with a verb, start everything in that column with a verb.
• If you begin with a noun phrase, make everything in the column begin with a noun phrase.
• If there is a period at the end, end every cell in the column with a period.

Apply These Strategies to Your Project

1. Learn about parallelism by watching the LinkedIn Learning video on Parallel Structures Links to an external site. (6m40s). The video is free with your VT login. Follow these instructions to login.
   
   The video begins with details on parallelism within a single sentence. At 4m50s into the video, the video discusses parallelism in bullet lists, outlines, and headings. That section of the video is closest to the kind of parallelism you will use for the columns of your Analysis table.
    
   

Parallelism Examples

Items In This Column Are Not Parallel	Items In This Column Are Parallel
Communication between coworkers and/or clients.	Communicate with coworkers and/or clients.
Explain what a particular section of the code does, including inputs and outputs.	Explain what a particular section of the code does, including inputs and outputs.
To verify that certain concepts or theories have the potential for real-world application	Verify that certain concepts or theories have the potential for real-world application.