Question from Sentence Correction Guide

[amit.ambitions]

Hi,

SC guide says to look parallelism in the below sentence as:

Many teachers choose to [SEEK employment in the suburbs rather than FACE low salaries in the city.

Cant we get the parallelism if we write the sentence as:

Many teachers choose TO SEEK employment in the suburbs rather than TO FACE low salaries in the city. (using infinitives)

I am confused whether the later construction is correct or not.

[RonPurewal]

Hi,

SC guide says to look parallelism in the below sentence as:

Many teachers choose to [SEEK employment in the suburbs rather than FACE low salaries in the city.

Cant we get the parallelism if we write the sentence as:

Many teachers choose TO SEEK employment in the suburbs rather than TO FACE low salaries in the city. (using infinitives)

I am confused whether the later construction is correct or not.

either would be correct.

from now on, please post your questions in the correct folder. (you originally posted this in the GMAT PREP QUESTIONS folder.) thanks in advance.

[mark_macg]

Is there an idiom similar too "choose X rather than Y"? This was the direction I was going with this question and guessed that a to would be needed in the second portion.

[tim]

It sounds like you're asking more of a parallelism question rather than an idioms question. In this case you could include a "to" or omit it and either option would be technically parallel. What you want to keep in mind in analyzing parallelism is NEVER to take a piece that shows up on the left and see if it appears on the right; instead, you should see what's on the right and try to find a match on the left. To reiterate, asking yourself whether the right hand side should include something that shows up on the left is ALWAYS wrong and reflects an approach that will often land you in trouble on SC.