Grammatically Correct: The writer's essential guide to punctuation ...

GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT
BETTER: The stocky self-confessed plagiarist showed no emotion as the
charges against him were read out in court.
The text editing program enables you to do the following:
-change the background color of your screen
-to select different fonts
-cutting and pasting text
-creation of complex layouts
Items in a list must be presented the same way. In addition, if
there is lead-in text, each list item must mesh grammatically with
it so that the lead-in and the list item together form a coherent
sentence.
BETTER: The text editing program enables you to do the following:
-change the background color of your screen
-select different fonts
-cut and paste text
-create complex layouts
Something else to watch for with lists is that you do not phrase
some items as complete grammatical sentences and others as single
words or sentence fragments. Both forms are legitimate, but not in
combination. If you are creating a list where certain items must be
phrased as complete sentences, rework the others so that they
become complete sentences too.
PARALLELISM AS A LITERARY DEVICE
Apart from the grammatical requirement of maintaining a consistent
structure, parallelism in the form of deliberate repetition can be
used as a literary device to achieve a pleasing cadence or to lend
additional emphasis and color. Note how it is used in the following
extracts:
230
The jig-saw pieces came together piece by piece, the real Rebecca
took shape and form before me, stepping from her shadow world like
a living figure from a picture frame. Rebecca slashing at her horse;