Next: Square Brackets
Up: Miscellaneous
Previous: Small Capitals
Parentheses (( )), also called round brackets, always occur in pairs. They
have one major use and one or two minor uses.
Most commonly, a pair of parentheses is used to set off a strong or
weak interruption, rather like a pair of dashes or a pair of bracketing commas.
In the case of a strong interruption, very often it is possible to use either dashes
or parentheses:
- The destruction of Guernica — and there is no doubt that the destruction
was deliberate — horrified the world.
- The destruction of Guernica (and there is no doubt that the destruction
was deliberate) horrified the world.
As a rule, however, we prefer parentheses, rather than dashes or
bracketing commas, when the interruption is best regarded as a kind of "aside"
from the writer to the reader:
- On the (rare!) occasion when you use a Latin abbreviation, be sure to
punctuate it correctly.
- The battle of Jutland (as you may recall from your school days) put an
end to Germany's naval threat.
- The Basque language is not (as the old legend has it) exceedingly
difficult to learn.
We also use parentheses to set off an interruption which merely
provides additional information or a brief explanation of an unfamiliar term:
- The number of living languages (currently about 6000, by most
estimates) is decreasing rapidly.
- The bodegas (wine cellars) of the Rioja are an essential stop on any
visit
to northern Spain.
- The royal portraits of Velázquez (or Velásquez) are justly renowned.
- The German philosopher Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) laid the
foundations of formal logic and of semantics.
In the last two examples, the phrases in parentheses merely provide an
alternative spelling of the painter's name and the birth and death dates of the
philosopher. In all these examples, neither dashes nor bracketing commas
would be possible, except that you might conceivably use dashes in the first.
Note also the way I introduce each new punctuation mark in this document.
It is possible to put an entire sentence into parentheses, or even a series
of sentences, if they constitute an interruption of an appropriate type:
- It appears that 33% of girls aged 16–18 smoke regularly, but that only
28% of boys in this age bracket do so. (These figures are
provided by a recent newspaper survey.)
Note that a sentence in parentheses is capitalized and punctuated in the normal
fashion.
Do not overdo parentheses to the point of stuffing one entire sentence
inside another:
- *The first-ever international cricket match (very few cricket fans are
aware of this) was played between Canada and the United States
in 1844.
This sort of thing is very common in the writing of those who neither plan their
sentences ahead nor polish their writing afterward. If you find you have done
this, rewrite the sentence in some less overcrowded way:
- Very few cricket fans are aware that the first-ever international cricket
match was played between Canada and the United States in
1844. or
- The first-ever international cricket match was played between Canada
and the United States in 1844. Very few cricket fans are aware
of this.
Parentheses may also be used to represent options:
- The referees who decide whether an abstract should be accepted will not
know the name(s) of the author(s).
- The (French) horn is an unusually difficult instrument to play.
The point of the last example is that the names French horn and horn denote the
same instrument.
Finally, parentheses are used to enclose numerals or letters in an
enumeration included in the body of a text:
- A book proposal prepared for a potential publisher should include at
least (1) a description of the content, (2) an identification of the
intended readership, (3) an explanation of why the book will be
necessary or valuable and (4) a comparison with any competing
books already in print.
Observe that, in contrast to what happens with dashes and bracketing
commas, we always write both parentheses:
- He was smitten by a coup de foudre (as the French none too
romantically put it).
Occasionally you may find yourself placing one set of parentheses
inside another. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but you should avoid it
whenever possible, since it makes your sentence hard to follow.