I used to use them very frequently. It took noticing that I was parenthesizing the second half of almost every sentence I wrote (to add a bit more info, like this), to make me go back and evaluate if I could remove them and replace with commas, or just break the sentence. I found that it was possible on almost all cases. Since then, I started doing this automatically as I started writing a "(" and then I kind of naturally stopped using parentheses so much. It was a bad habit that I somehow formed and found a means to self-correct.
The one place where I find parenthesis really jarring is in the middle of quotes. I just can't wrap my head around something like
> "I'm sending (via email) an encrypted message", Alice said to Bob
Especially in a book that's been supposedly copy edited. Em dashes or commas or just a plain run-on sentences feel much more appropriate for the general lack of structure in real speech.
Parentheses, commas, em-dashes, footnotes, endnotes, and starting new sentences can all be used for interlocutions.
Endnotes maximize disruption, the reader has to turn to the back of the book to find the end note, then return to what they were originally reading. These are best reserved for citations or similar items where the added information is irrelevant to normal reading. Endnotes can have their own endnotes.
Footnotes aren't quite as disruptive as endnotes, but they're close. Footnotes can themselves have footnotes.
Surrounding an interlocution with two copies of the same character, whether a comma or a dash, reduces clarity —or makes the work ugly— when there's more than one interlocution in a sentence.
Parentheses allow nesting, don't disrupt the flow of reading the way footnotes or endnotes do, and don't reduce clarity with multiple interlocutions. It's generally much better to not have multiple interlocutions, as they inherently make the work hard to read. It's especially difficult to read nested interlocutions. But sometimes nested interlocutions are used to good effect, such as Terry Pratchett's humor involving footnotes of footnotes. Parenthetical interlocutions to define the first use of an acronym or initialism are also a good exception to the rule of avoiding multiple interlocutions in a sentence.
> Endnotes maximize disruption, the reader has to turn to the back of the book to find the end note, then return to what they were originally reading.
This is why Tufte-style margin notes are so nice. It is effortless to scan them and choice to read or skip. I wish more blogging software included it as a sort of standard styling option.
"He was certainly a flamboyantly creative writer and inspired teacher; yet one can take him seriously here: “Pricks” performed “tricks” as punctuation became a vehicle to think about the technological revolutions of the time, gender relationships, and literary genres reflecting social and historical concerns like kingship or geographical exploration."
It's a pity because the material she is covering, the fever of Elizabethan rhetorical inventiveness, including in the written form, is so rich & interesting.
She pulls out useful detail & quotes but then links it together with her own overwritten & eccentric prose.
One of my pet peeves is people opening a parenthesis and never closing it. It's like my brain pushes the parenthetical into a stack and when I get to the end of the paragraph it throws an error.
I definitely overuse parenthesis and I haven't found a way to rid myself of the habit (as I managed to mostly rid myself of the habit of using semi-colons).
I don't like the two examples of parenthesis used in the title & subtitle of this piece, where they put wonderful and perfect in parentheses before a noun phrase.
Putting adjectives in parentheses before a noun (phrase) is, yes, a useful device but those adjectives should usually be words that give more (but not necessary) information, rather than purely subjective qualifiers such as the two that the author uses. I know they're probably being a bit tongue in cheek but it still grates a little that these were the two examples they led with.
Well, you’re getting more information about the author’s subjective opinion (which they may have deemed unnecessary to include in the main, non-parenthesised text).
I use parentheses too much, and have to catch myself and correct (usually switching to commas or em-dashes) [sic]. I think it's part of the diseased mind caused by a lifetime of programming and recursive syntax.
I try not to use parentheses, favoring other ways of interleaving thoughts - like this - unless I feel a stray idea deserves mentioning (like so). What's disgraceful that I'd never do myself, but certainly sympathetic to the motive, are double-parentheses (likely from Lispers (who think in nested lists)).
In legal writing, an inline footnote begins with the word "see" in italics, e.g.,"football-related prayer in public schools is now permitted,see,Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist., 597 U.S.507 (2022)." It's just as easy to make this a footnote but some judges have objected to "excessive" footnotes in legal submissions. Keeping them inline avoids this criticism.
ps On another note, AI legal hallucinations are a solved computing problem. Either a cite or case is contained in the closed universe of materials or it isn't--a simple binary question. Problem is, thos with control of the materials, starting with 1 Dallas (which predates the United States) won't share the list with AI companies.
pps This forum deletes unicode. The word see was gobbled from the original text.
I used to use them very frequently. It took noticing that I was parenthesizing the second half of almost every sentence I wrote (to add a bit more info, like this), to make me go back and evaluate if I could remove them and replace with commas, or just break the sentence. I found that it was possible on almost all cases. Since then, I started doing this automatically as I started writing a "(" and then I kind of naturally stopped using parentheses so much. It was a bad habit that I somehow formed and found a means to self-correct.
The one place where I find parenthesis really jarring is in the middle of quotes. I just can't wrap my head around something like
> "I'm sending (via email) an encrypted message", Alice said to Bob
Especially in a book that's been supposedly copy edited. Em dashes or commas or just a plain run-on sentences feel much more appropriate for the general lack of structure in real speech.
Parentheses, commas, em-dashes, footnotes, endnotes, and starting new sentences can all be used for interlocutions.
Endnotes maximize disruption, the reader has to turn to the back of the book to find the end note, then return to what they were originally reading. These are best reserved for citations or similar items where the added information is irrelevant to normal reading. Endnotes can have their own endnotes.
Footnotes aren't quite as disruptive as endnotes, but they're close. Footnotes can themselves have footnotes.
Surrounding an interlocution with two copies of the same character, whether a comma or a dash, reduces clarity —or makes the work ugly— when there's more than one interlocution in a sentence.
Parentheses allow nesting, don't disrupt the flow of reading the way footnotes or endnotes do, and don't reduce clarity with multiple interlocutions. It's generally much better to not have multiple interlocutions, as they inherently make the work hard to read. It's especially difficult to read nested interlocutions. But sometimes nested interlocutions are used to good effect, such as Terry Pratchett's humor involving footnotes of footnotes. Parenthetical interlocutions to define the first use of an acronym or initialism are also a good exception to the rule of avoiding multiple interlocutions in a sentence.
> Endnotes maximize disruption, the reader has to turn to the back of the book to find the end note, then return to what they were originally reading.
This is why Tufte-style margin notes are so nice. It is effortless to scan them and choice to read or skip. I wish more blogging software included it as a sort of standard styling option.
"He was certainly a flamboyantly creative writer and inspired teacher; yet one can take him seriously here: “Pricks” performed “tricks” as punctuation became a vehicle to think about the technological revolutions of the time, gender relationships, and literary genres reflecting social and historical concerns like kingship or geographical exploration."
absolute trainwreck.
Yes, she's a bad writer.
It's a pity because the material she is covering, the fever of Elizabethan rhetorical inventiveness, including in the written form, is so rich & interesting.
She pulls out useful detail & quotes but then links it together with her own overwritten & eccentric prose.
One of my pet peeves is people opening a parenthesis and never closing it. It's like my brain pushes the parenthetical into a stack and when I get to the end of the paragraph it throws an error.
I definitely overuse parenthesis and I haven't found a way to rid myself of the habit (as I managed to mostly rid myself of the habit of using semi-colons).
https://xkcd.com/859/
)
Thank-you.
I don't like the two examples of parenthesis used in the title & subtitle of this piece, where they put wonderful and perfect in parentheses before a noun phrase.
Putting adjectives in parentheses before a noun (phrase) is, yes, a useful device but those adjectives should usually be words that give more (but not necessary) information, rather than purely subjective qualifiers such as the two that the author uses. I know they're probably being a bit tongue in cheek but it still grates a little that these were the two examples they led with.
Well, you’re getting more information about the author’s subjective opinion (which they may have deemed unnecessary to include in the main, non-parenthesised text).
I use parentheses too much, and have to catch myself and correct (usually switching to commas or em-dashes) [sic]. I think it's part of the diseased mind caused by a lifetime of programming and recursive syntax.
I've always wanted to use parentheses in prose the way we do in math, to make grouping explicit:
The (small business) owner. The small (business owner).
or
((Buffalo buffalo) ((Buffalo buffalo) buffalo)) buffalo (Buffalo buffalo).
> The (small business) owner. The small (business owner).
Your second formulation doesn't work. Words in parentheses should be able to be omitted without loss of grammaticality.
Instead,
The small (business) owner
would be a better contrasting formulation to the first one.
I don't know why but I seem to use more parenthesis (even if I should be using commas).
I try not to use parentheses, favoring other ways of interleaving thoughts - like this - unless I feel a stray idea deserves mentioning (like so). What's disgraceful that I'd never do myself, but certainly sympathetic to the motive, are double-parentheses (likely from Lispers (who think in nested lists)).
I just had thw thought: aren't parentheses just punctuation denoting an inline footnote?
In legal writing, an inline footnote begins with the word "see" in italics, e.g.,"football-related prayer in public schools is now permitted,see,Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist., 597 U.S.507 (2022)." It's just as easy to make this a footnote but some judges have objected to "excessive" footnotes in legal submissions. Keeping them inline avoids this criticism.
ps On another note, AI legal hallucinations are a solved computing problem. Either a cite or case is contained in the closed universe of materials or it isn't--a simple binary question. Problem is, thos with control of the materials, starting with 1 Dallas (which predates the United States) won't share the list with AI companies.
pps This forum deletes unicode. The word see was gobbled from the original text.
> AI legal hallucinations are a solved computing problem
> those with control of the materials [...] won't share the list with AI companies.
These are definitely claims I would make if I was an AI legal company that hadn't solved hallucinations.
No Amount of Grammatical Feats Will Make You Look Smart If You Use Word Capitalization.
Five comments here write "parenthesis" where they mean "parentheses" ... weird.
Analysis, analyses. Basis, bases. Many more.
You can't escape them.
Sometimes, you have to.
And not a single mention of Lisp? Tsk.
Came for comments with an unreasonable amount of parenthesis; not disappointed.
Now having a revival because AI killed the em dash.