Determine whether the sentences are "parallel" or "not parallel."

Listed in the Item Bank are key terms and expressions, each of which is associated with one of the columns. Some terms may display additional information when you click on them. Drag and drop each item into the correct column. Order does not matter.

1.) Actors should read their lines loudly, clearly, and with enthusiasm.
2.)Robert fell in love, got married, and raised a family
3.)Writing may be difficult, but to plagiarize is illegal.
4.) I plan to do three things with my day off: to sleep in, to watch too much television, and eating junk food all day.
5.) We live one life but dream a million dreams.

The key to identifying parallelism in sentences and also using it effectively to avoid making the grammatical error of have a non-parallel sentence is to make sure the verbs of the sentence have the same grammatical structure.

If one of the verbs is a gerund (writing) and the second is an infinitive (to plagiarize) then the sentence sounds a little choppy. A better way to write number 3 would be:

Writing may be difficult, but plagiarizing is illegal.