The statement, "Symmetry is what
you see at a glance" comes from the 17th century
mathematician Blaise Pascal. And it's a nice reminder
of how parallel structure can make content both easier to
understand and easier to remember. It's not an accident, for example, that Coca-Cola used parallel structure to
promote its efforts at sustainability. Enjoy a Coke, recycle the bottle,
verb-article-noun, verb-article-noun. Or check out this slogan from St.
Jude Children's Hospital, one of the leading centers for
pediatric care in the US, and a place that has committed itself to never
charging its patients for treatment. "Finding cures, saving children." You can certainly overdo
parallel structure. Starting off a novel with five straight
instances of parallel structure, as Charles Dickens does
in A Tale of Two Cities, that's kind of cool, but I don't recommend that strategy
the next time you email your boss. What I do recommend, however, is starting to pay attention to
when parallel structure is used well. That could be in architecture,
that could be in logos, that could be in anything that shows just
how powerful an organizing principle putting corresponding ideas in
corresponding forms can be.