A balanced diet

A well-balanced and grammatically equal sentence guides readers effortlessly. However, if two or more parts of a sentence are equal in meaning but not in form, it slows comprehension:

[A] The candidate’s goals include winning the election, a national health program, and the educational system. ❌
[B] The candidate’s goals include winning the election, enacting a national health program, and improving the educational system. ✅

[C] Harry likes to run, swim and go biking. ❌
[D] Harry likes to run, swim and bike. ✅

Properly composed sentences match nouns with nouns, verbs with verbs, and phrases or clauses with similarly-constructed phrases or clauses.

Well-written sentences create a sense of rhythm and balance. As readers, we often correct faulty parallelism intuitively because an unbalanced sentence sounds awkward and poorly constructed

Lists can also suffer from faulty parallelism. For example:

[E] Our conclusions ❌
[F] Finally, recommendations ❌

These can be improved to read:

[G] Draw conclusions ✅
[H] Make recommendations ✅

The same applies to lists after a colon:

[I] A dictionary is used for the following: word definitions, pronunciation with phonetics, correct spellings, and looking up irregular verbs. ❌
[J] A dictionary is used for the following: definition, pronunciation, spelling, and structure. ✅

In each example, word forms should be consistent. Whether you are using gerunds, plurals or adverbs, balance is important:

[K] The production manager was asked to write his report quickly, accurately, and in a detailed manner. ❌
[L] The production manager was asked to write his report quickly, accurately, and thoroughly. ✅

If something is breaking the rhythm in the sentence, improve it.