Question

Which of these endings will not create parallel structure for the following sentence stem?

He was sitting, reading, and

planning for dinner.
considering his options.
thought about the book.
eating a sandwich

Answer 1

only things ending in -ing would ensure parallelism in this sentence

there for the answer is "thought about the book"

Answer 2

The correct answer is C. Thought about the book

Step-by-step explanation:

A parallel structure refers to a type of grammatical structure in which elements of the same importance are presented using the same grammatical form or pattern in a sentence. In the sentence stem presented "He was sitting, reading, and..." there is a repetition "-ing" or gerund forms and therefore parallelism can be created if the last element includes this grammatical pattern. This means, adding planning, considering or eating would create parallelism, but adding a "thought about the book" does not create parallelism because this breaks with the repetition of the same grammatical structure that is necessary for parallelism.