parallelism?

[Bonnie S.]

In Writing Aids' grading rubrics, one of the bullets under structure is "parallelism." I >think< have heard that term used for two different things. One is topics being kept in the same order throughout a paper (eg, if you mention a, b, and c in your intro paragraph, you would address them in that order in the body paragraphs. And if you address aspects x, y, and z of topic A, then you would address them in that order for topic B.)
The other way I've heard the term parallelism used is making sure to keep grammar consistent; eg. that things in a list are in the same grammatical form (eg, NOT: "We went to the movies, the roller rink, and went to the coffee shop.")
To which are the rubrics referring?
Thanks,
Bonnie

[DanaCinTN]

Hi Bonnie,
Typically in Writing Aids, it's the first one you've mentioned (keeping the topics in the same order throughout the paper), but I always checked for both. In college, they will certainly count off for errors of either type.

Hope this helps!

[Bonnie S.]

Thanks, Dana.
I forgot to turn on notifications, and just remembered to check for an answer. >*blush*<
I wanted to make sure I'm calling it the correct thing, since another writing book I checked in defines parallelism with the 2nd definition, and I couldn't find a term referring to the first definition.
Bonnie