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Proper Use of Parentheses, Brackets and Braces

( ) – Parentheses (singular: parenthesis): For parenthetical phrases (phrases which would not affect the sentence structure if removed.)

They are used for nonvital information or elaboration:
The quick brown fox (which was being hunted) jumps over a lazy dog.

Here we have extra information (the fox is being hunted) which can be removed: The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.

Parenthetical phrases can also appear between dashes or commas:
The quick brown fox — which is being hunted — jumps over a lazy dog.
The quick brown fox, which is being hunted, jumps over a lazy dog.
They’re still called parenthetical even if there are no parentheses.

Parentheses are also used for indicating “either singular or plural”: The quick brown fox(es) jump(s) over the lazy dog.

[ ] – Square brackets (or just “brackets”): Usually for omissions or third-party inclusions.
You may see this: “Blah blah quoted text [. . .] blah” where [. . .] indicates part of the quoted text which was deemed superfluous by the quoter and removed, but with an indication that the quotation is no longer whole.

You may also see this: “Blah blah quoted text [elaboratory information] blah” where [elaboratory information] indicates information that was not part of the original quotation but which was added by the quoter for clarification or comment. It’s usually seen when someone wants to dispense their opinion or thinks that the quotation itself lacks context.

Some people are taught to use square brackets (and braces) for nesting parenthetical phrases. No one really cares and I’ve never seen anyone told they’re wrong for simply nesting parentheses.

Besides those, the most common thing you’ll see in brackets is [sic], which is basically the quoter telling you “I didn’t fuck this up, the guy I’m quoting did” right after a typo, misspelling, misuse, etc.

{ } Braces or curly brackets: I actually didn’t know of any prosaic usage for these until I looked it up just now. It seems that:
 

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
Curly brackets [. . .] are sometimes used in prose to indicate a series of equal choices: “Select your animal {goat, sheep, cow, horse} and follow me”.

I’ve never actually seen this in common use (or uncommon use  ) — I would have thought to use parentheses there. I wouldn’t worry about adhering to this.

The rest of the uses of these symbols deal with poetry, music, computer programming, etc. so I won’t go into them. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket – it’s actually very interesting, especially about some languages using guillemets for quotation marks.

Discuss http://www.totse.info/bbs/showthread.php?p=57953

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