Grammar girl here, today we'll talk about a question that can come up if you're writing

fiction or really anything that contains dialogue and action.

Suppose I'm writing a scene in which Artvark gives squiggly a present.

I write, you shouldn't have said squiggly, comma, and grabbed the box of chocolates.

Or wait, instead of that, maybe I should write, you shouldn't have said squiggly, comma,

and he grabbed the box of chocolates, putting in the pronoun he to refer to squiggly.

In fact, both sentences are fine, but if you've started to pay attention to parallel

structure in your writing, you might be second-guessing yourself about what to do in cases

like these.

I talked about parallel structure in the episode on how to write a better resume.

Here's a quick review, a sentence like this is sloppy, fenced or crawled slowly, steadily,

and won the race.

It's sloppy because it has the conjunction and, looking at adverb, slowly, another adverb,

steadily, and a verb phrase won the race.

Though the sentence is understandable, readers can find it disconcerting.

They're expecting another adverb in the series, and then have to suddenly shift gears

to process a verb phrase instead.

To fix it, all you need to do is put in another and, fenced or crawled slowly and steadily,

and won the race.

Now the first and is linking the adverb slowly and steadily.

The second and is linking two verb phrases.

The first verb phrase is crawled slowly and steadily.

...