An Unparallel Compound

rogersgeorge on November 6th, 2018

Whenever you have two (or more) of something in a sentence, they should share the same structure. For example, if you have a list, they should all be the same part of speech. Line items in bulleted lists should have the same structure. (I wrote about parallelism several times in the past. Look up “parallel” in the search box in the upper right corner.)

I’m not sure how this is wrong, but it’s wrong. The sentence has a compound direct object that doesn’t match itself:

This time around the threat is contained, but flight crews have detailed and practiced responses to more extreme problems.

Maybe it’s because the source is British. I Americanized the spelling.  https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/nasa-international-space-station-leak-iss-latest-alarm-soyuz-module-a8514291.html

“Detailed” looks like an adjective (a detailed response), and “practiced” looks like a verb (they practiced responses). Not the same. Bad. Maybe “detailed” is a verb? What is the sense of detailing a response? Is “practiced” an adjective? What’s a practiced response? I think the sentence is just plain not well written.

They could fix this with a simpler sentence; for example:

This time around the threat is contained, but flight crews have practiced detailed responses to more extreme problems.

One verb, one direct object. Nice. 

One Response to “An Unparallel Compound”

  1. I don’t know if there’s a problem. I’ve done enough technical/scientific reading that “the crews have practiced responses” also means the responses are well-practiced, i.e. it can be read as an adjective in the quote. Or is this regional?

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