Co-ordinating units of writing must all be of the same grammatical kind. This is what is referred to as preserving parallel structure. For instance, nouns must match with nouns, adjectives with ...

“Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is.” You might have thought that only the pill that goes with that jingle creates relief. But science suggests the jingle’s wording itself elicits relief.

Faulty parallels come up in my editing work all the time, but I have yet to see a better example than a line from the movie “Rain Man.” In the 1988 film, Raymond, an autistic savant played by Dustin ...