Multiple choice

Select the sentence that uses parallel structure.

  1. Someone had better explain what this dirt is doing down here

  2. You left dishes in the sink, towels in the tub, and no food

  3. Taylor Swift likes singing, dating, and complaining

  4. I asked for a hand and all he gave me was this old glove.

Reveal answer Fill a bubble to check yourself
C Correct answer
Explanation

Parallel structure requires that items in a list or series share the same grammatical form. In Option C, the three activities are all gerunds ("singing", "dating", "complaining"), making it perfectly parallel. Option B is not parallel because "no food" is a noun phrase that does not match the prepositional phrases "dishes in the sink" and "towels in the tub".