Lesson: English Grammar - 21
One Odd Rule
[Page 21 of 28]
Whenever a sentence lists more than two things in parallel form, it has to follow a certain rule if certain prepositions ("under," "in," "on," etc.), articles ("a," "an," "the"), or infinitive stems ("to…") are involved. Look at the following sentence:
Example 1: Mytilee likes to dance, read, and to talk to her friends.
This sentence is flawed because the stem "to" shows up only with the first and third verbs. It either needs to be used in all three cases or only in the first case, as the following two examples demonstrate.
Example 2: Mytilee likes to dance, read, and talk to her friends.
Example 3: Mytilee likes to dance, to read, and to talk to her friends.
These are the only correct alternatives given the structure of the sentence.
Yes, this is a pretty pedantic rule - you can certainly understand all three sentences equally well - but make sure you know it well by test day.
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