Parallel construction is a
grammatical concept which appears both in
natural language and in
artificial languages such as
programming languages. It holds that when one is stating points or ideas which follow the same pattern and relate to one another -- such as
examples,
options,
branches, or
cases -- one should use the same grammatical structure for each point or idea.
Consider the following sentences:
- "We could go to the movies, go to a concert, or smoke some pot."
- "We could go to the movies, a concert, or smoke some pot."
- "We could go to the movies, a concert, or a pot party."
Of these three, the first and third exemplify
parallel construction. In the first, all three options are written as
verb phrases,
predicates of the
subject "we"; in the third, the options are
noun phrases,
objects of the verb "go". The second, however, stands out as
awkward, as it offers as options two verb phrases and a noun phrase.