Information Systems Term project total 5 assignment all connect

Parallel Lists Ver. 23

Given that this is an upper-level college course, good spelling and grammar are expected. One subject that causes some people trouble is the grammatically parallel list. A grammatically parallel list is more professional and easier to understand than one that is not.

Nevertheless, many students turn in Argument Summary lists that are not parallel. Please review this page if you have any questions about how to do this.

Overview A list, such as a bullet list in a PowerPoint presentation, should be grammatically parallel. That is, all of the items in the list should have the same grammatical form.

Usually, each item will be one of the following forms:

● Nouns ● Adjectives ● Phrases ● Clauses ● Sentences

(Notice that the preceding list consists of all nouns.)

Phrases can be many types, including verb phrases ("save money"), noun phrases ("the most savings"), gerund phrases ("saving the most money"), adjective phrases ("the most economical"), and full sentences.

Making a list parallel is more important than using a specific form. For example, you might say the following:

Plan A is the best for the following reasons:

1. It will save us money. 2. It will help us grow. 3. It will reward our employees.

The list contains all sentences. However, it is also somewhat repetitive.

You could also say this:

Plan A will do the following:

● Save us money ● Help us grow ● Reward our employees

The preceding are all verb phrases. Another possibility uses noun phrases:

Plan A:

● The most savings ● The fastest growth

● The best employee rewards

This could be reduced further by using only nouns:

Plan A Benefits:

● Savings ● Growth ● Rewards

This list isn't necessarily better, because you don't get any detail, but it is parallel. Gerund phrases are another option:

Benefits of Plan A:

● Saving more ● Growing faster ● Rewarding better

Any of these lists are possibilities, and all are grammatically parallel. However, some of them may communicate more effectively than others. That is up to you to decide.

The important thing is to pick a form for your argument summary list and stick with it. To check, create a sentence with one of the items in the list, and replace that item with the other items in the list. Does the sentence make sense and sound similar with each substitution?

For (a bad) example:

We should adopt Plan A because

● It will save us money. ● Helps us grow ● Employee rewards

"We should adopt Plan A because helps us grow" is clearly wrong, as is "We should adopt Plan A because employee rewards."

More Examples Here are some examples (all based on actual student submissions):

Parallel Lists

1. Business Continuity 2. Business Agility 3. Reduced Downtime 4. Test and Development

Agility 5. Server Consolidation

(These are all nouns or noun phrases.)

1. Improve Customer Experience

2. Build Business Relationships

3. Increase Revenue and Cut Spending

4. Minimize Waste 5. Provide Ongoing

Support

(These are all verb phrases.)

Non-Parallel Lists

1. Business Continuity (noun) 2. Business Agility (noun) 3. Reduce Downtime (verb) 4. Testing and Developing Agility (noun) 5. Consolidate the Servers (verb)

1. Improve Customer Experience (verb) 2. It will Build Business Relationships (sentence) 3. If we do this, our Revenues will Increase and Spending will

Decrease (longer sentence) 4. Minimizing Waste (noun) 5. Provided Ongoing Support (past-tense verb)

Finally, here is an example that, although it is parallel, is NOT a good argument summary list because it is redundant and cluttered. It should be easy for the audience to get to the main points of your list.

1. We should adopt this technology in order to improve our accuracy in managing inventory. 2. We should adopt this technology in order to improve the visibility of orders. 3. We should adopt this technology in order to reduce our operational costs. 4. We should adopt this technology in order to improve the efficiency of store operations. 5. We should adopt this technology in order to shorten the retail cycle.

A better list would be the following:

Adopting this technology will:

1. Improve accuracy in managing inventory 2. Improve visibility of orders 3. Reduce operational costs 4. Improve efficiency of store operations 5. Shorten retail cycle

If you would like more information, do a search on "grammatically parallel lists." You will find plenty of examples.