Which of the following sentences shows proper parallel structure? a) judith dislikes people who are rude, selfish, and they are self-centered. b) judith dislikes people who are rude, selfish, and self-centered. c) judith dislikes people who are rude, selfish, and very self-centered. d) judith dislikes the people who are sometimes rude, act selfish, and self-centered.

The sentence that shows proper parallel structure is B) Judith dislikes people who are rude, selfish, and self-centered.

It is called parallel structure to the repetition of a grammatical form within the same sentence. In other words, it refers to the use of the same grammatical pattern in order to make the sentence clearer for the reader.

In sentence B) "people" is modified by a defining relative clause ("who are rude, selfish and self-centered"). The defining relative clause includes three adjectives ("rude", "selfish" and "self-centered") and that is what makes the sentence a parallel structure.

Sentence B) is the only sentence where grammatical forms have not been mixed. Sentence A) presents two independent clauses  ("Judith dislikes people who are rude, selfish" and "they are self-centered"), which results in the separation of the last adjective and a breakdown in the parallel construction. In sentence C) "self-centered" is premodified by the adverb "very",  which also creates a faulty parallelism. Sentence D) does not show a proper parallel structure either since it includes a verb ("act") in the defining relative clause.  

Given that the definition of parallelism is a sentence that has several of the same speech pattern, Option B is the only option that correctly applies parallelism since it’s the only option that describes the three adjectives in the same form, "rude, selfish and self-centered" the other options have an addition to the self-centered part "and, who are rude, they are self-centered" so that is what makes them incorrect at least doesn’t applies to the parallelism rule.

source text: from the sketch here given it will be seen, that our good grandmothers differed considerably in their ideas of a fine figure, from their scantily dressed descendants of the present day. a fine lady, in those times, waddled under more clothes even on a fair summer's day, than would have clad the whole bevy of a modern ball room. nor were they the less admired by the gentlemen in consequence thereof. on the contrary, the greatness of a lover's passion seemed to increase in proportion to the magnitude of its object—and a voluminous damsel, arrayed in a dozen of petticoats, was declared by a low-dutch sonnetteer of the province, to be radiant as a sunflower, and luxuriant as a full blown cabbage. certain it is, that in those days, the heart of a lover could not contain more than one lady at a time; whereas the heart of a modern gallant has often room enough to accommodate half a dozen - - the reason of which i conclude to be, either that the hearts of the gentlemen have grown larger, or the persons of the ladies smaller — this however is a question for physiologists to determine. add punctuation to the following excerpt. writing under the name of diedrich knickerbocker washington irving aimed his potent satire at as diverse topics as political rivals such as thomas jefferson to the very ideal of looking back on the past affectionately: a fine lady, in those times, waddled under more clothes even on a fair summer's day, than would have clad the whole bevy of a modern ball room. a voluminous damsel, arrayed in a dozen of petticoats, was declared by a low-dutch sonnetteer of the province, to be radiant as a sunflower, and luxuriant as a full blown cabbage. in those days, the heart of a lover could not contain more than one lady at a time; whereas the heart of a modern gallant has often room enough to accommodate half a dozen