Parallel Structure with Prepositions

Writers often mistakenly withhold repetition of prepositions with corresponding sentence elements in the erroneous belief that those elements can share a single preposition. In each of the following sentences, a repeated preposition is missing, and a discussion after each example explains the problem and a revision resolves it.

1. These developments are significant as the cost and influence of regulation on business models remains high in many industries.

This sentence’s construction implies that cost can share the preposition of with influence, but it requires its own, because cost is parallel not to influence but to “influence of regulation on”: “These developments are significant as the cost of, and influence of regulation on, business models remains high in many industries.”

2. Such dysfunction can arise from incentives that do not encourage resiliency and management being out of touch with the customer.

Similar to the problem in the previous sentence, from should be repeated before management so that the reader is not led to believe that management corresponds to resiliency rather than to incentives: “Such dysfunction can arise from incentives that do not encourage resiliency and from management being out of touch with the customer.”

3. They are designing preventive and detective control activities that are effective in the new environment, both from a risk-management and operational-scalability perspective.

For the phrasal adjectives “risk management” and “operational scalability” to be fully parallel, legitimately sharing the noun perspective, the second phrase must, like the first phrase, be preceded by an article: “They are designing preventive and detective control activities that are effective in the new environment, both from a risk-management and an operational-scalability perspective.” (Better yet, do so and transpose both and from and repeat perspective after each phrasal adjective: “They are designing preventive and detective control activities that are effective in the new environment, from both a risk-management perspective and an operational-scalability perspective.”)