Parallelism problems in sentences
Read the following sentence.
Freedom of speech is one of the hottest and largely debated topic in recent times.
Can you identify the error in it?
The problem with this sentence is that it connects a superlative adjective (the hottest) with an adjective in the positive degree (largely debated). This makes the construction faulty. When you connect two or more items with ‘and’ or ‘or’, you need to ensure that they are in the same form. That means, if one item is a comparative adjective, all other items too should be comparative adjectives.
Here we can solve the problem by connecting two superlative adjectives.
Study the sentence given below.
Freedom of speech is one of the hottest and most widely debated topics in recent times.
Now two superlative expressions (the hottest and most widely debated) are connected. Note that the article ‘the’ is optional before the second adjective in this sentence.
Also make sure that you are using a plural noun or pronoun after ‘one of’. However, the verb should be singular.
One of my friends lives in Zambia. (NOT One of my friend lives in Zambia.)
