ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by parallel construction. The more productive

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brother of parallel destruction.

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How should you change the underlined portion below, if at all?

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The coach told the players that they should get a lot of sleep, that they should not eat

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too much, and to do some warm-up exercises before the game.

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OK listen, not all parallel constructions require the same introductory phrase, but

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there's definitely some wonkiness here, right?

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Each item on the list starts with "that they should" except for the last one, which randomly

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starts with "to do some."

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It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that this list is inconsistent and definitely

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not parallel.

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Let's just cross off choice (A), and get on with the elimination process.

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(D) is incorrect because it uses "they will" instead of "they should."

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Instead of saying what the students ought to do, the coach is suddenly telling them

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they're going to do it whether they like it or not.

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Sure, there are a bunch of coaches out there who would do just that.

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But it seems random to shift our introductory phrase for no good reason. Sorry, Coach.

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Choice (C) is wrong because it uses "they can" instead of "they should."

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Now it's like the coach is suddenly going, "Meh, you can do this if you want...I don't

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know..."

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(B) is the correct answer because it has the "they should" we've been looking for.

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Now the coach's lecture is consistent, parallel, and fully comprehensible.

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Which is good, because confusing speeches can lead to some bad situations on the field.

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