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A sentence follows the rules of parallelism when its
components maintain a consistent structure. The relevant components are
those that the sentence compares to each other or includes in a list.
Below is an example:
Aaron had plans to go to the store, see a movie,
and dine with a friend.
Three parts of the sentence pick up on "had plans to"
and those three parts need to be parallel. He had plans to (1) go to the
store, (2) see a movie, and (3) dine with a friend. Notice how the parts
are interchangeable; each one would make a complete, grammatically correct
sentence following "had plans to." Because the sentence lists them, they must all have the same form, as they do here.
Whenever a sentence sets up a parallel structure, consciously
look to see if the components that are parallel are in the same grammatical
form. They must be to be correct, it they're not the structure is
flawed and needs to be fixed. This is another commonly tested grammatical flaw on the Exam.
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