Which of the following sentences uses parallelism effectively?

A. The large plant-eating dinosaurs were quite slow, rather stupid, and extremely hungry.
B. The Red Sox fans screamed, yelled, and were applauding wildy.
C. The report was good because it was factual and offered many details.
D. Laura spent all her time gardening and arranging flowers, when she wasn't in a shoe store to shop.

What do YOU THINK is the correct choice?

I thought it was C, but after reading definition of parallelism I'm just not sure

The sentence that uses parallelism effectively is A. "The large plant-eating dinosaurs were quite slow, rather stupid, and extremely hungry."

Parallelism involves using a consistent grammatical structure in a sentence, especially when listing items or ideas. In this specific sentence, the parallel structure is applied by using adjectives to describe the plant-eating dinosaurs: "quite slow," "rather stupid," and "extremely hungry." Each adjective is structured in the same way, creating a parallel construction.

To determine which sentence uses parallelism effectively, you need to examine each option and look for consistent grammatical patterns. In option B, the verbs "screamed," "yelled," and "were applauding" represent different tenses and do not follow a parallel structure. Similarly, option C lacks parallelism because it uses different sentence structures ("it was factual" versus "offered many details").

Option D also does not use parallelism effectively. The first part of the sentence, "Laura spent all her time gardening and arranging flowers," uses the gerund form (verb + -ing) of the action. However, the second part of the sentence, "when she wasn't in a shoe store to shop," uses an infinitive verb phrase ("to shop"). This inconsistency in structure breaks the parallelism.

Therefore, option A is the correct answer as it maintains parallelism by consistently using adjectives to describe the plant-eating dinosaurs.