Parallelism - Real World Examples

In the Fort Douglas example, it seems that parallelism was averted because of the sheer quantity of information that the author wishes to convey. By not adhering to strict rules of writing and parallelism, the author is able to expand the breadth of his bullet points to discuss everything from who will be living in the housing, to why, when, and for whom the housing was originally built. It is, after all, an advertisement, and as such the author needs to cram as much enticing information into the available space as possible. Therefore, standard writing rules are thrown to the wind in favor of packing lots of info into a small space.

In example 2, a similar thing seems to be happening. It’s hard to know if this is a result of intentional disregard for ‘good writing’ or an honest mistake, but the clear point of this ad is to communicate the 9 bullet points offered. The fact that they are disjointed and poorly written is of little concern, apparently. The primary goal is to create something that, when read by an interested party, will result in the reader remembering something of interest from the advertisement. How it is compose is irrelevant; what’s important is that a reader responds positively to one or more of the points listed, or is influenced enough to remember a phone number or website.