What, if anything is wrong withb the following sentence?
Carmen is tall, slender, and a woman of great beauty.
a. Comma splice
b. Dangler
c. Properly constructed sentence
d. Lacks parallel parts

fully --

The answer is "d" because the sentence as written does not use
parallel parts of speech in its list of Carmen's attributes.

Since "tall" and "slender" are adjectives, the writer should use the
adjective "beautiful" in the list of attributes, rather than the
phrase "woman of great beauty," which awkwardly unbalances the
sentence. That is, the sentence should read as follows: "Carmen is
tall, slender and very beautiful."

Here is a famous example of parallel contruction and a link to a
useful discussion of parallelism in grammatical construction in
general:

"Example: 'I came, I saw, I conquered.'

"The famous words of Julius Caesar would not have nearly the impact
they do had he said, "I came, I was seeing, I wanted to conquer." The
coming, the seeing, and the conquering all have the same importance in
his statement. They all serve the same function. Because identical
grammatical forms were used for each (simple past tense verbs--came,
saw, conquered), the sentence balances; it is parallel."

St. Louis Community College: Writing Center
http://www.stlcc.cc.mo.us/mc/support/cwc/fpages/Parallelism.html

Here is another example:

"Unbalanced--
"Boy Scouts at the camp can learn cooking, canoeing, swimming, or how
to make ropes.

Parallel --
"Boy Scouts at the camp can learn cooking, canoeing, swimming, or rope-making. 
   
"Here again, the form of the last item, 'how to make ropes,' doesn't
match the other items and seems too heavy.  To balance the sentence,
change the form to match as in the parallel example."

Literacy Education Online: Parallelism
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/grammar/parallelism.html
 

If you want to pursue more deeply this particular issue involving
parallelism in grammar, you might perform the following Google search
for yourself and look over the top results:

"grammar" "parallelism" "part OR parts of speech"
://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2004-01%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=%22grammar%22+%22parallelism%22+%22part+OR+parts+of+speech%22&btnG=Search


Search Strategy:

I used Google searches to find good explanations for the answer.  The
most useful of those was the one I included above as part of the body
of the answer.


I was happy to be able to give you a prompt answer.  If anything is
unclear, please ask me for clarification before you rate the answer.


markj-ga

HEY!!!!

Thats my name!!!

But I'm short, slender and considered more "cute" than beautiful :)

Steph53

fully -

Thanks for the five stars and the tip.  Good luck on your grammar studies.  


markj-ga

What is the most often misspelt word?  Grammar

The really funny thing is that in two questions, one of fully's that
been closed and one a little while back, although incorrectly spelled
as subject for the question, in "Subject: Re: ...." line for the
answer it was correctly spelled.
How can that be??

Anyway,   Steph, if you are a Venetian blonde, I'll think you're more
beautiful than just cute.  :-°  (puckering up out the corner of my
mouth)

Two answers to two comments:

One:
Fully: "To be fit, you should get enough sleep, exercise regularly,
and eat a healthy diet."
  IndexTurret: "Your sentence does not need to be changed."
  Steph53: "I disagree...There shouldn't be a comma after "regularly"
as it is followed by the word "and"."
   That comma is called a serial comma. Whether to use it is (in the
English language) a matter of the publisher's house style, or in the
absence of that, an editor's preference. (In some other languages, for
example Spanish, it is consistently NOT used.) Nowadays, most good
editors of scientific and technical matter in American English prefer
that it be used. I don't know about the consensus, if any, in the UK.

Two:
Myoarin: "What is the most often misspelt word?  Grammar
The really funny thing is that in two questions, one of fully's that
been closed and one a little while back, although incorrectly spelled
as subject for the question, in "Subject: Re: ...." line for the
answer it was correctly spelled.
How can that be??"
   When you type an answer or a comment in GA, you can edit the subject line.

Having clarified, I am,
IndexTurret

Thanks for that, indexturret-ga. I wanted to say virtually the same
thing re: the other question/comment.

PS: web search for ga commenters. I'd like your take on something.

Thanks for the tip.  Maybe knowing that can be useful for something
other than correction spelling.  I am a great believer in the Oxford
comma (before the "and").  It suggests old-fashioned, unhurried, and
upper-class civility and speech cadence, none of this modern,
telegraphic, machine-gun, rap and talk-before-you-think way of
talking.

>PS: web search for ga commenters. I'd like your take on something.

Thanks for the invite. I searched, I saw; but alas, I did not
register. It's nice that you built it, but I am trying to cut back on
my GAC addiction. I'll visit again in the future, and maybe if I can't
get the GAC monkey off my back I'll register.