Parallelism

Question

There seems to be a rule that the same tense should be used throughout a parallel structure.

"Marc picked up the hammer and hit the nail."

But I have found a sentence in the GMAT official guide in which the parallel verbs have different tenses.

"The baseball team gave up seven unearned runs in the second inning of today’s game, and still are losing in the seventh inning. "

So can parallel verbs have different tenses?

I have also read that another rule of parallelism is that nouns must match with nouns, adjectives with adjectives, verb with verbs. Does that mean that the two sentences below that match adjective with verb are considered grammatically incorrect?
"The team is aware of this issue and working to have it resolved."
"I admire and am very interested in this project."

Thank you

Clive · Accepted Answer

There seems to be a rule that the same tense should be used throughout a parallel structure.

"Marc picked up the hammer and hit the nail." <<< This is really a matter of style rather than of rules.

But I have found a sentence in the GMAT official guide in which the parallel verbs have different tenses.

"The baseball team gave up seven unearned runs in the second inning of today’s game, and still are losing in the seventh inning. " ( Better word order is '. . . and are still losing . In addition, I'd consider 'the team is' instead of 'are'. )

So can parallel verbs have different tenses?<<< Yes.

I have also read that another rule of parallelism is that nouns must match with nouns, adjectives with adjectives, verb with verbs. Does that mean that the two sentences below that match adjective with verb are considered grammatically incorrect? <<< No. As I said, it's a matter of style.
"The team is aware of this issue and working to have it resolved." <<< Sounds fine.
"I admire comma and am very interested in comma this project." <<< Sounds awkward, probably because the preposition 'in' seems to relate also to 'admire' and one does not 'admire in' something. I'd consider adding commas as shown, to overcome this problem.

AlpheccaStars · Answer

polkadotzySo can parallel verbs have different tenses?

The tenses should make sense as a sequence. This sentence is fine because it describes a logical sequence of actions —one in the past, and the other a current state — in the progress of a game.

The baseball team gave up seven unearned runs in the second inning of today’s game, and still are losing in the seventh inning. 
Using a non-finite clause is just fine, too.
The baseball team are still losing in the seventh inning, having given up seven unearned runs in the second inning.

polkadotzy Does that mean that the two sentences below that match adjective with verb are considered grammatically incorrect?

You are talking about two different things. A paragraph can be grammatically correct but be very inelegant due to bad style. Parallelism relates to style more than grammar. Both of your sentences are very awkward and on the border of being ungrammatical.

Parallelism

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