As a writer, I believe I’m guilty of overusing parentheses. I also believe many writers are guilty of underusing them. Given the discrepancy, I thought it would be helpful to write down some quick rules here… my guidelines on when (and when not) to use them. Keep in mind that I’m not going strictly by the book here, and that these are just my rules that I’ve found work best for my style. I encourage you to develop your own, in accordance to your own style.
To start, I prefer to think of grammar not in terms of what I can’t do, but in terms of what I can do. For example, I prefer not to think “when do rules forbid me from using parentheses?” But rather, “how and when can I use parentheses to enhance my writing?” In accordance with that approach, here are the two main cases in which I use parentheses to make my writing better:
- I use them for adding information that I want to include, but that I don’t want people to read in the context of a certain sentence. This is the classic creative use, and comes in handy for sentences like “I bought a movie ticket for Jenny (to a bad romantic comedy) because I was hoping to get some action in the back of the theater.” More to the point of business copy, it comes in handy for sentences like “Our new product release (set for June 3rd) will feature a new iphone app, and contextual advertising opportunities.”
- I use them to add the proper intonation and proper flow. This one is less traditional, but comes from my belief that good writing reads like we speak - that’s how people are used to consuming information, and I still think that’s how they consume it best. And if you do you listen to people talk, we say many things below our breath - not everything is spoken with the same power. In short, I use parentheses (just like this), to imitate that kind of speech. It’s not like a set of commas, which emphasizes what lies between them, and it’s not like a hyphen - those strongly mark a new point. It’s just like a set of parentheses (so nice, yet simple), and I think it works.
Obviously I omitted a couple arcane uses of parentheses here, like enclosing numbers in a list, or enclosing monetary figures on a sheet. But I think I covered the two big ones, that you can keep an eye out for using (and using well). As always, though, too much of a good thing is not good at all. That’s especially the case for parentheses because they’re visually demanding, and take up a good deal of physical space. So as much as you keep an eye out for utilizing parentheses in these instances, keep an eye out for cutting them in other instances.
Your Input: did I miss any obvious uses here? are there any you like, that I didn’t touch on here? any here that you dislike (and would like removed)? did you catch what I did, in the last sentence of list-item 2? eh, eh?
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