Principles of Parallelism Parallel constructions give your writing clarity by putting similar items into a similar format. Without a similar format, readers may be confused as to how the ideas actually relate to each other. The principle of parallelism is especially important when it comes to lists. For example, a list of  verbs ("My favorite sports are skiing, fishing and snowboarding") should contain only verbs of that type (Incorrect: "My favorite sports are skiing, fishing and to snowboard"). Parallelism is thus a way of achieving and maintaining balance in your sentences among parts that should be balanced in order to provide a clear and concise meaning for the reader. If you experience difficulty in playing this video, copy and paste the following URL into a new browser window: http://polaris.umuc.edu/ewc/web/parallelism/parallelism.html