Parallelism and Paul Simon

Remember writing poems in elementary school? As a young poet, I wrote one about the planets and amazed the teacher with how each line rhymed and with my use of syllabic verse. I also far exceeded her expectations due to the sheer length of the poem – It was 22 lines when only five were assigned. She was so impressed, she published my gargantuan poem in the school newspaper!

Comparably, I look for rhymes and patterns when reading audit reports. It’s called ‘parallelism’ which uses similar words, phrases, bulleted lists and other grammatical elements to emphasize similar ideas in a sentence. I was completely unaware of this principle until I received feedback on my first audit report.

Maybe I was out sick the day we covered it, but none of my public school teachers or college professors ever brought up the concept of parallelism. Once my audit manager explained the concept, I took to parallelism like a duck takes to water.

Paul Simon prepared me

Like most of my contemporaries, I listened to Top 40 radio for most of my youth. Songwriter and performer, Paul Simon, topped the charts for two decades spanning the late 60’s through the 80’s. Either his solo hits or his collaborations with Art Garfunkel seemed to play at least once every hour. After hearing each song at least a hundred times, I memorized the lyrics.

My well-honed (ha!) poetry writing skills and Paul Simon’s songs prepared me to embrace parallelism.

In particular, I lean on one of Paul’s songs when I want to make my bullets parallel: 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover. Please note my fourth-grade mind memorized the lyrics, but I didn’t know what they meant. I had no idea what a lover was or why you would want to leave them!

Parallelism demands you display a pattern at the beginning of the bullet or phrase. Sort of like rhyming, but at the front end instead of the back end.

Here is the chorus to 50 Ways to Leave your Lover. Pay attention to the bolding:

1. Slip out the back, Jack
2. Make a new plan, Stan
3. You don’t need to be coy, Roy
4. Just listen to me
5. Hop on the bus, Gus
6. Just drop off the key, Lee
7. And get yourself free

Ok, that isn’t perfectly parallel, but lines 1, 2, and 5 are:

1. Slip out the back, Jack
2. Make a new plan, Stan
5. Hop on the bus, Gus

See how each of those lines starts with an action, moves to either a “the” or an “a” and then has a subject (back, plan, bus?) This is followed by a comma and a name. How tidy and similar! Downright parallel, right?

Paul Simon achieved both a parallel structure and a rhyme (“back, Jack”, “plan, Stan”, “bus, Gus”.) Wow, I am so impressed I published his little poem in my newsletter. 😊

An audit report example of parallelism

Here’s an example from an audit report that might help you see this concept in action, but some bullets aren’t parallel. Can you see them?

Some of these efforts included:

• Opening new Contact Center locations in S and W, due to the record high volume of claims brought on by the pandemic. By July 2020, the new contact center location in W (the largest location) was staffed with nearly 500 employees.
• Contracting with an outside vendor to process imaged documents received from claimants that the system does not automatically attach to a claim, freeing up contact center staff to answer phone calls and process claims.
• Standing up a new website that was more user-friendly, translated into 15 languages other than English, and updated with the latest program requirements and instruction, as well as creating instruction guides and video clips to help people navigate the claim process.
• With the new website, creating a “Contact Us” feature that allows people to reach out through a ticket system and wait for ED to get back to them.
• During the pandemic, ED implemented a temporary measure called Benefits While You Wait. This process provided benefits to individuals while their UI claims were still pending review and determination in adjudication.
• Revising communication procedures with employers to lessen the time needed to adjudicate claims, to try to get benefits out quicker and reduce backlogs.
• Speeding up adjudicator training by training adjudicators on one type of claim issue at a time and then having them work just those types of claim issues.
• Contracted with a local workforce board to stand up a call center specifically to help individuals with limited English proficiency apply for and access UI benefits.
• Contracted with the Health Authority to work with community-based organizations to help individuals with limited English proficiency and other communities facing additional access barriers with obtaining UI benefits.

Pick a pattern

Let’s work on that list a bit. In order to achieve parallelism, a pattern must be picked and and the bullets need editing to fit the pattern. There’s usually more than one solution or pattern to choose from. In this case, five out of the nine bullets are parallel. I’ll use the pattern of the first few bullets starting with words ending in ‘ing’:

• Opening new
• Contracting with
• Standing up a

Then make the other bullets match that pattern:

• Creating a “Contact Us” feature on the new website that allows people to reach out through a ticket system and wait for ED to get back to them.
• Implementing a temporary measure called Benefits While You Wait during the pandemic.

The next two bullets are fine and fit our chosen pattern of starting with a word ending in ‘ing’:

• Revising communication
• Speeding up adjudicator training

Now I need to change the last few bullets:

• Contracting with a local workforce board to stand up a call center specifically to help individuals with limited English proficiency apply for and access UI benefits.
• Contracting with the Health Authority to work with community-based organizations to help individuals with limited English proficiency and other communities facing additional access barriers with obtaining UI benefits.

And there you go. All Paul Simoned-up!

(You might have noticed that the word ‘during’ in the fifth bullet ends in ‘ing’ and you could declare that particular bullet parallel. Because ‘during’ is not an action word, I prefer my solution of starting with the word ‘implementing’ far better.)

Want to know more about parallelism?

If you want to know more about parallelism, I suggest watching this video.

For more on audit report writing, I suggest Yellowbook-CPE’s self-study bundle on audit reporting.

Stay tuned for our next Audit Reporting Clinic where we practice making sentences and bullet lists parallel.