Conventions of Composition Rule 177 Practice

1. Wrong: Dmitry can do his favorite sports--to swim, to run, and playing tennis--in the summer, when he's at his grandmother's house or at the park.

Better: Dmitry can do his favorite sports--swimming, running, and playing tennis--in the summer, when he's at his grandmother's house or at the park.

Also better: Dmitry can do his favorite sports--to swim, to run, to play tennis--in the summer, when he's at his grandmother's house or at the park.

Explanation: In the list of three sports, each should take the same grammatical form, infinitive or gerund.

2. Wrong: Tanawat (from Bangkok) speaks Japanese as well if not better than Riku, who was born in Osaka.

Better: Tanawat (from Bangkok) speaks Japanese as well as, if not better than Riku, who was born in Osaka.

Explanation: This illogical comparison, missing the second as is closely related to problems of parallelism. (For further explanation of this rule, you can look at rule 162.)

3. Wrong: Zhang Wei would rather see Chicago's professional sports teams than Boston.

Better: Zhang Wei would rather see Chicago's professional sports teams than Boston's.

Also better: Zhang Wei, a lover of professional sports, would rather see Chicago than Boston.

Explanation: The faulty parallelism in this sentence between Chicago's professional sports teams and Boston, which leads to an unclear comparison. To correct the issue, the two items under consideration must be written in the same grammatical form.

4. Wrong: Lucas either wants to eat almond croissants for dessert or crepe Suzette.

Better: For dessert, Lucas wants to eat either almost croissants or crepe Suzette.

Explanation: The correlative conjunctions either and or must be followed by items written in the same grammatical structure. In the original sentence, wants to eat almond croissants for dessert and crepe Suzette are not parallel.