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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by parallel construction. The more straight-laced

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cousin of perpendicular construction.

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What should replace the underlined word below?

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He quickly scanned the rules and reads the instructions.

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In general, verbs in a sentence should follow the rule of parallel construction unless the

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content signals otherwise by showing cause and effect, or the passage of time.

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In this case, that means that the correct form of "read" has to be in the past tense,

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because "scanned" is the past. See how this parallel construction thing works?

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It means that the original sentence is incorrect, because "reads" is in the present tense.

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If we left the sentence the way it is, our construction would definitely not be parallel.

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Nobody likes wonky construction, so we can take (A) out of the running.

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Choice © doesn't make the cut, either, because "will read" is in the future tense.

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Sorry, but typical parallel construction doesn't allow for one part to be in the future while

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the other is in the past.

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(D) gets all fancy and uses the present progressive tense.

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Unfortunately, all we need is the simple past tense version, so (D) is out of the running.

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Choice (B) is the correct answer, because "read" is the past tense of "read," and so

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parallel construction is complete.

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We tried to follow the rule of parallel construction when we built our restaurant, but we ended

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up with two identical kitchens on either side of the building.

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