5 exercises — practise parallelism in numbered steps, lists, comparisons, requirements, and JSDoc to write clear, consistent technical content.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which set of deployment steps follows correct parallel structure?
Parallel structure in numbered steps requires all items to share the same grammatical form. Option B is correct: all three steps use the base imperative form ("Run", "Push", "Update") — consistent and scannable. Option A mixes a gerund ("Running") with imperatives ("Push", "Update"). Option C mixes an imperative, a passive sentence, and a gerund. Option D mixes an imperative, a gerund, and a modal sentence. Technical style guides (Google, Microsoft, Apple) universally mandate imperative verb phrases for instructional steps: "Run", "Open", "Click", "Configure".
2 / 5
Which sentence contains a parallelism error in a technical comparison?
Option B has a parallelism error: it mixes three different grammatical structures after the linking verb "is": an adjective ("fast"), a verb phrase ("scales well"), and an adjective clause ("it is reliable"). All items in a parallel list must share the same grammatical category. Options A, C, and D all maintain parallelism: A uses three adjectives, C uses three nouns, D uses three comparative adjective phrases. In technical writing, parallelism is especially important in comparison tables, feature lists, and performance descriptions.
3 / 5
Which bullet-point list uses parallel noun phrases correctly?
Option B is correct: all four bullets are parallel noun phrases ("A new authentication module", "Performance improvements to the query engine", "A fix for the session timeout bug", "Enhanced logging"). Option A breaks parallelism by switching to full sentences ("We fixed…", "Logging has been enhanced") after noun phrases. Option C mixes participial phrases with a full sentence. Option D mixes gerunds with an infinitive. For release notes and changelogs, noun-phrase bullets are standard: they are concise, scannable, and easy to translate.
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly expresses parallel requirements in a technical specification?
Option B is correct: the modal "must" governs three parallel infinitive phrases — "encrypt all data at rest", "encrypt all data in transit", and "retain audit logs for 90 days". The shared auxiliary "must" applies to all three, and each phrase uses the same base verb form. Option A mixes a modal-verb construction ("must encrypt") with a passive clause ("should be encrypted") and another modal ("must be retained") — three different structures. Option C uses progressive forms ("be encrypting") incorrectly with "must" in requirements. Option D uses semicolons after the first clause then gerunds — structurally incorrect.
5 / 5
A developer is writing JSDoc for a function. Which parameter description list is correctly parallel?
Option B is the best parallel JSDoc style: each description starts with "The" + noun phrase, providing consistent syntactic structure — "The user's unique identifier", "The number of milliseconds to wait before timing out", "Whether to retry the request on failure". This pattern is recommended by JSDoc style guides. Option A is close but mixes "The" noun phrases with conditional clauses ("How long to wait", "If the request should be retried"). Option C is too terse and inconsistent. Option D varies structure between a bare noun ("User ID string value"), a full sentence ("It specifies…"), and a relative clause ("This is used to indicate…").