And, it is a powerful tool for public speaking. Throughout history, many famous leaders have used parallel structure to communicate with the public. Here is a famous saying by Abraham Lincoln:. You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. Lincoln repeats people and time in all three clauses. But he changes the order of the words some and all. The word quotation is easy to memorize because of its rhythm and parallel structure.
One common type of parallelism is called antithesis. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness. Notice how Dickens uses pairs of opposite words: best and worst ; wisdom and foolishness. Writers and poets have long used antithesis to show the paradoxical — or opposing — nature of life.
English poet John Milton contrasted heaven and hell in this passage from Paradise Lost :. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. Martin Luther King fought for racial equality in the United States in the s and 60s. In , he gave an unforgettable speech on the National Mall in Washington, D. King and his supporters were pushing the U. Congress to pass a civil rights law. Listen for repetitions and opposites. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state, sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today. In the speech, King made many contrasts. King contrasts the sons of slaves and the sons of slave owners. Those were the people who made up most of his audience that day.
Cummings' poem, love is more thicker than forget, uses the words "love is" and "more" or "less" to create a parallel structure that explains the meaning of love. Parallelism uses similar words, phrases, or clauses to show that ideas have the same level of importance.
This structure improves readability by giving a natural flow to a written work. For native speakers of English, parallelism is often instinctive. We say, "I like reading, writing, and painting" instead of "I like to read, writing, and painting. However, one common mistake novice writers make involves failing to keep items in a list after a colon in a parallel form.
For example, "Writers can use an online dictionary to find help with these issues: word meanings, pronunciations, and finding correct spellings" does not use a parallel construction. Changing the text to read, "Writers can use an online dictionary to find help with these issues: word meanings, pronunciations, and correct spellings" gives it a parallel construction and improves readability.
Additional examples of parallel sentence structure include the following:. Reading written text out loud is often an effective way to identify examples of parallelism or areas that need editing to maintain a parallel structure.
Listening to the rhythm of words as they flow from your tongue will help you maintain the desired balance in your writing, whether you're writing a persuasive essay or a romantic love poem. All rights reserved. MLK I have a dream quote. Some examples of parallelism in rhetoric include the following: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today. Kennedy "I don't want to live on in my work. I want to live on in my apartment. If they can conceive it and believe it, they can achieve it. They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude that will determine their altitude.
Bush You can also see rhetorical parallelism used in longer speeches, such as this example by John F. Kennedy: "The Ireland of , one of the youngest of nations and the oldest of civilizations, has discovered that the achievement of nationhood is not an end but a beginning. Parallelism in Literature The opening paragraph of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities is perhaps the best-known example of parallelism in literature.
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What Is Parallelism? Subscribe for free to get unrestricted access to all our resources on research writing and academic publishing including:. We hate spam too. We promise to protect your privacy and never spam you. Why is Parallelism Important? Parallel construction.
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