Coordinate Ideas

Coordinate Ideas

The rule for coordinate ideas is simple: logical sameness should be expressed with grammatical sameness.

Express coordinate ideas using a parallel grammatical structure.

Parallelism is the expression of coordinate ideas in a coordinate, or identical, grammatical form.

Example 1:

1. ^aBill is happy but ^bsadness is felt by John.

2. ^aBill is happy but ^bJohn is feeling sad.

3. ^aBill is happy but ^bJohn is sad.

Here, only [Bill is happy] and [John is sad] are gramatically parallel, so only 3. meets the rule that coordinate ideas should be expressed using parallel structure.

Here two more examples:

Example 2:

1. ^aThe absorption of l-amino acids is active, but ^bd-amino acids are absorbed passively.

2. ^aThe absorption of l-amino acids is active, but ^bthe body absorbs d-amino acids passively.

3. ^aThe absorption of l-amino acids is active, but ^bthe absorption of d-amino acids is passive.

Example 3:

As the ideas become more complex, Requirement 1 becomes more important. Here, notice how much clearer the parallel example is:

1. XM907 has been shown ^ato possess selective affinity for the AMPA/kainate receptor, and ^bto inhibit AMPA-induced Ca2+ influx into cells in primary cultures of hippocampal cells. ^cInhibition by this compound of delayed neuronal death has also been demonstrated in gerbil global brain ischemia models.

2. XM907 has been shown ^ato possess selective affinity for the AMPA/kainate receptor, and ^bto inhibit AMPA-induced Ca2+ influx into cells in primary cultures of hippocampal cells. This compound has also been shown ^cto inhibit delayed neuronal death in global brain ischemia models in gerbils.