You've already learned about compound sentences and how we join two independent clauses with a comma and a conjunction, like and or but. You've also learned about compound sentences where we joined the two independent clauses with a transition word like therefore, and we use a semicolon and a comma to punctuate those. Remember when you have a series of three or more items, that means three nouns, verbs, or adjectives, you need to put commas between them.

As you've already learned, when you join two independent clauses with a transition word, you have to put a semicolon in front and a comma after. Remember, that what a transition word interrupts a sentence, you put commas around it. In the third sentence we had an introductory phrase, in addition, so we put a comma after it.

You should be feeling pretty good now about using commas, and now we're gonna start talking about something different. In this module, you're learning about parallel structure. You may not know what that is, but watch the video lecture and do all of the activities and then you'll understand how to use parallel structure in your writing.

In English, you can think of parallel as meaning balanced, like in the picture of the scale on the right. And we have close to my work and easy to afford, both of those are adjective phrases. Now close to my apartment and affordable are both adjective phrases and we have parallel structure.

One way to change the beginning of a sentence is to add an adverb. So if you start a sentence with an adverb, that's a way to create variety. But before you turn in your essay, when you're doing your revising and editing, it is important to think about sentence variety.