Often overlooked, this step can make your writing smoother, clearer, and shorter. Just as the rails of a train track must be parallel, try to make your structures parallel by expressing similar ideas in a sentence with similar grammatical forms.

此步驟經常被忽略，但它可以讓你的寫作更加流暢、清楚和簡短。就像火車的軌道必須平行，你也可使用文法形式近似的句子來表達類似的想法，讓你的結構也能夠平行。

Which sentence is clearer?

哪個句子比較清楚?

A. Taipei is very large; it has lots of people, and I find Taipei fascinating.

B. Taipei is large, crowded, and fascinating.

“B” is better, clearer, and less cluttered. Why? Large, crowded, and fascinating are all adjectives, in parallel structure.

B句較佳，它比較清楚和精簡。為什麼呢？因為large, crowded, fascinating都是形容詞，形成平行的結構。

Here are some easy tips to remember. →For each set, the first sentence is not parallel, while the second one is.)

以下是一些平行結構的簡單訣竅。（每組的第一個句子不是平行的，第二句才是。）

1.Make adjectives parallel.使形容詞平行

●The large dog snarled loudly and scared us.

→ The large, scary dog snarled at us.

2. Make nouns parallel. 使名詞平行

●Please bring charcoal, a box of matches, some meat dishes, and some kind of vegetable to the picnic. And we will need something to drink too.

→ Please bring charcoal, matches, meat, vegetables, and drinks to the picnic.

3. Make verbs parallel. 使動詞平行

●Victor, smiling, said “hello,” then quickly bounded away.

→ Victor smiled, said “hello,” then bounded away.

(Notice the parallel verbs are all in the past tense.)

（所有動詞在平行結構中皆為過去式。）

●My morning routine, after waking up, is to have some breakfast, and after having brushed my teeth, I try to leave home by 7:00.

→My morning routine is to wake up, eat breakfast, brush my teeth, and leave home by 7:00.

(These parallel verbs are all in the present tense.)

（所有動詞在平行結構中皆為現在式。）

4. Make adverbs parallel. 使副詞平行

●He drove the car with great care and also safely.

●He drove the car carefully and safely.

5. Make phrases, clauses, and comparisons parallel. 使片語、子句和比較平行

●Deborah is good with art as well as in the area of music.

→Deborah is good with art as well as with music.

Here is an example from technical English, reporting on robot technology.

以下是科技英文的例句，報導機器人技術。

●Recently, this technology has been gradually adopted in industry, medical purposes, business and family applications.

→Recently, this technology has been gradually adopted in industrial, medical, business, and family applications.

→Make “industrial” an adjective and cut “purposes.”)

（用形容詞industrial，並刪除purposes。）

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