Question

which sentence uses the strongest parallelism? select the best answer.

jeremiah sells forks for a living and buys stamps for a hobby. he wears ties covered in polka dots; bandanas are what his father wears. he talks about losing his kidneys, potato soup, and running for president.

answer

jeremiah sells forks for a living and buys stamps for a hobby. he wears ties covered in polka dots; bandanas are what his father wears. he talks about losing his kidneys, potato soup, and running for president.

Explanation:

🆕 New Concept Discovered: Parallel Structure (Parallelism)
Matching grammatical forms in a series of items.

Step 1: Understand Parallelism

Parallelism means using the same pattern of words to show that two or more ideas have the same level of importance. This happens at the word, phrase, or clause level. When listing items in a series, all items should share the same grammatical structure (e.g., all nouns, all gerunds, or all prepositional phrases).

Step 2: Analyze the Sentences

Let's look at the sentences in the passage to find where a list or comparison is made:

1. Sentence 1: "Jeremiah sells forks for a living and buys stamps for a hobby."

• Structure: [Verb] + [Noun] + [Prepositional Phrase] ("sells forks for a living") paired with [Verb] + [Noun] + [Prepositional Phrase] ("buys stamps for a hobby").
• Analysis: This sentence has excellent, balanced parallel structure.

1. Sentence 2: "He wears ties covered in polka dots; bandanas are what his father wears."

• Structure: The first clause is active voice ("He wears ties..."), while the second clause shifts to passive/different structure ("bandanas are what his father wears").
• Analysis: This is not parallel. A parallel version would be: "He wears ties covered in polka dots and bandanas passed down from his father."

1. Sentence 3: "He talks about losing his kidneys, potato soup, and running for president."

• Structure: A list of three items:
• Item 1: "losing his kidneys" (Gerund phrase: [verb-ing] + [noun])
• Item 2: "potato soup" (Noun phrase: [noun] + [noun])
• Item 3: "running for president" (Gerund phrase: [verb-ing] + [prepositional phrase])
• Analysis: The list is not parallel because "potato soup" is a simple noun phrase, whereas the other two items are gerund phrases starting with -ing verbs.

Step 3: Identify the Strongest Parallel Sentence

The first sentence, "Jeremiah sells forks for a living and buys stamps for a hobby.", maintains a perfectly symmetrical grammatical structure in both parts of the compound predicate.

Answer:

Jeremiah sells forks for a living and buys stamps for a hobby.