"When I read it, I thought, 'Why don't they make a movie out of this? It would be a blockbuster.' I wasn't sure about it for TV. I knew it would either be big or the worst television show ever." - Yunjin Kim, in Stuff, on Lost

Yunjin has made a complex error in parallelism. She has used the correlative conjunctions "either" and "or" in a construction that is not parallel for two reasons.

The correlative conjunction pair follows the helping verb "would," so each element associated with a conjunction should be able to be paired with "would."

• (either) would be big [This makes sense.]
• (or) would the worst television show ever [This does not make sense.]

This error in parallelism can be corrected in two ways: (1) the verb "be" could be moved so that it is paired with "would" before the conjunction phrase, or (2) another instance of "be" could be inserted after the second correlative conjunction.

1. I knew it would be either big or the worst television show ever.
2. I knew it would either be big or be the worst television show ever.

While these versions of Yunjin's sentence balance the verbs and the conjunctions, they still contain an error in parallelism because the paired items do not have the same grammatical structure.

• big [This is an adjective.]
• the worst television show ever [This is a noun phrase.]

One way to correct the error in parallelism is to change the adjective to a noun phrase that conveys the same meaning.

I knew it would be either a big hit or the worst television show ever.

I knew it would either be a big hit or be the worst television show ever.