Stuart's Daily Word Spot: Parallelism

Parallelism: noun – literally and figuratively, thestate, character or position of being parallel; a parallel case, passage; Correspondencein sense or construction of successive passages; a passage exemplifying this; thestate of keeping to the same direction; in Psychology, the belief in a correlationbetween mental phenomena and physical events in the brain; in Biology, thedevelopment of similar characteristics by two related groups of animals orplants responding to similar environmental pressures; in Anthropology,  similarity between the evolution and achievementsof different cultures; in Computing, the execution of operations concurrentlyby separate parts of a computer, e.g. separate microprocessors, the ability tooperate in this way.
However, as awriter, my interest in this rests on a specific application; i.e. its relevanceto the use of bullet points:
So frequentlypassages of information are reduced to bullet points as a way of simplifyingthe presentation and aiding assimilation. But if the sets of points are notconstructed using parallelism, the result is one of confusion rather than clarity.
Take a sentencelike: 'When preparing a MS for conversion to a suitable form for Smashword'smeatgrinder, it is essential that the text is devoid of special characters,lacks extra spaces, utilises a single font, excludes references to competitor'sproducts, and is formatted in a standard form.
A common errorin presenting such a sentence in the form of bullet points would probablyresult in something like:
When preparinga MS for conversion to a suitable form for Smashword's meatgrinder, it isessential that the text is:·        devoidof special characters·        lacksextra spaces·        utilisesa single font·        excludesreferences to competitor's products·        is formattedin a standard form.
If you readthis with each bullet point separately, you'll see that only the first linemakes grammatical sense.
The alternativeversion, employing parallelism, would look something like this:
When preparinga MS for conversion to a suitable form for Smashword's meatgrinder, it isessential that the text:
·        is devoidof special characters·        lacksextra spaces·        utilisesa single font·        excludesreferences to competitor's products·        is formattedin a standard form.
Simply missingout the ending 'is' from the introductory sentence now means that the rest ofthe points make sense.
So, the secretto a correct bullet-point list is reading the introductory sentence with eachfollowing point in order to see that it makes sense.
Pic: Walls of the old fortress on Spinalonga Island, Crete; a former leper colony, which was the subject of Victoria Hislop's evocative and emotive novel; The Island.