The Write StuffApril 2013 Volume 9 Issue 4Watch Your Parentheses
Punctuation can make or break your copy; it’s a great tool to ensure readers can easily comprehend what you’re communicating, but it can also serve as a deterrent. With that in mind, let’s focus on parentheses (or perhaps you call them brackets).
I have two words for those of you who are parentheses fans: writer beware.
Typically, the best way to use parentheses is as I did above, at the end of a sentence. If you are going to use them within a sentence, you should ensure the copy between them is as brief as possible. For instance, I could have used an em-dash (a long dash) as an alternative to parentheses in the sentence above:
With that in mind, let’s focus on parentheses–or perhaps you call them brackets.
Which option is easier for you to read? For me, it’s the latter, as parentheses can be rather clunky. They can actually result in an unwelcome distraction, which is why using parentheses within sentences can make them more difficult to read:
Tomorrow I’ll be traveling to Chicago (where the weather forecast includes the possibility of rain almost every day I’ll be there) to hang out with my nephew while the rest of his family is away.
Did you forget the first part of the sentence by the time you reached the end of the parentheses? A better way to write the same thing would be:
Tomorrow I’ll be traveling to Chicago to hang out with my nephew while the rest of his family is away. The weather forecast includes the possibility of rain almost every day I’ll be there.
One other tip about parentheses: if the copy inside them is a complete sentence, be sure to punctuate properly:
My beloved Cubbies set a Major League Baseball record the other day. (They threw five wild pitches in one inning.) It might be a long season for those of us who are Chicago Cubs fans.
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