“I have the utmost respect for Angelina. She’s a very sweet person, very talented and one of my best friends in the world.” - Billy Bob Thornton, about Angelina Jolie
Billy Bob has made an error in parallelism. His second sentence contains a list of items that are not all the same grammatical structure.
Look at the [...]
“I want to be loved, happy, and not settle for something less than we all deserve.” - Jennifer Aniston
Jennifer has made an error in parallelism. She has listed three items that follow the infinitive “to be,” but two are adjectives and one is an infinitive phrase. Similar items in a series should be structured in [...]
“I was not the kind of artist that had my mommy hold my hand and my daddy managing my career.” - Christina Aguilera in GQ
This sentence contains two errors: an error in pronoun choice and an error in parallelism.
The pronoun “that” refers to “kind of artist.” An artist is a person, so the correct pronoun [...]
“Football is like hockey in that it’s an expensive sport to play. You have to have the proper equipment and finding a place to practice and have games.” - Mark Wahlberg, who stars as football player Vince Papale in Invincible, on the challenges of playing the sport in his youth
Mark has made an error in [...]
“Listen, he’s a great man, he’s a great friend, he’s a great actor and so much fun.” - Jennifer Aniston, describing Vince Vaughn
Jennifer has made an error in parallelism. The quote contains a list of four of Vince’s qualities, but three are independent clauses and one is an adjective phrase. Listed items in a sentence [...]
“She’s brunette, beautiful, smart, sassy, a good businesswoman, and strong-willed.” - Brandon Routh, in USA Weekend, about his girlfriend Courtney Ford
Brandon has made an error in parallelism. He has listed six qualities about his girlfriend, but five are adjectives and one is a noun. Items in a list should conform to the same part of [...]
“According to him, I have a lazy eye, a huge ear and my feet are completely deformed because of dancing.” - Penelope Cruz, in People, on her brother Eduardo’s list of her shortcomings
Penelope has made an error in parallelism. She has listed three things about herself, but two are noun phrases and one is an [...]
Both Cher and Tori Spelling are holding auctions to sell their personal belongings. You can place a bid on either Cher’s 16th-century terra cotta figurine of Jesus Christ or you can try to buy Tori’s black lace Prada cocktail dress.
The second sentence contains an error in parallelism. One correlative conjunction is followed by a noun, [...]
During her Confessions tour, Madonna has been using expletives, gesturing offensively toward the audience, and she made disrespectful remarks about the president. However, when her father was in attendance at a concert in Chicago, she left these bits out of her performance.
The first sentence contains an error in parallelism. It lists three things that Madonna [...]
Gwyneth Paltrow knocked over her husband Chris Martin’s computer, damaging the outer casing, ruining the screen, and the forthcoming Coldplay songs that were stored on it were almost destroyed.
This sentence contains an error in parallelism. Three things happened when Gwyneth knocked over the computer, but the list contains two verbal phrases and one independent clause. [...]
