Punctuation Problems: Proper Parentheses, Part Two

On Punctuation With Parentheses

Parenthetical statements come in two varieties: small statements within a sentence, or longer statements of one or more sentences.

When inserting a parenthetical statement into a sentence, don’t move any of the sentence’s punctuation into the parentheses or adjust the grammar of the sentence to account for the text in the parentheses. You should be able to completely remove the parenthetical statement from the sentence and still have all grammar and punctuation flow correctly:

     Original: While I was speaking with Ludwig, I was also texting my wife.

     Wrong: While I was speaking with Ludwig (my step-father,) I was also texting my wife.

     Right: While I was speaking with Ludwig (my step-father), I was also texting my wife.

     Original: I don’t dislike Ludwig, but I don’t really enjoy his company, either.

     Wrong: I don’t dislike Ludwig (or his children,) but I don’t really enjoy their company, either.

     Right: I don’t dislike Ludwig (or his children), but I don’t really enjoy his company, either.

As a good rule of thumb, if the parenthetical is within a sentence, two things should be true: first, you should not begin the parenthetical with a capital unless it is a word that is normally capitalized (like a name); second, you should never have any punctuation at the end of the statement inside the parentheses. The only exception for this is if the statement is a question or an exclamation, in which case you can end it with a question mark or exclamation point, respectively. Note, however, that the question mark or exclamation point will not end the sentence.

     Wrong: Ludwig is really smart (He is a physicist.) and kind of socially awkward.

     Right: Ludwig is really smart (he is a physicist) and kind of socially awkward.

     Wrong: I don’t really get Ludwig (and probably never will;) he doesn’t really get me either.

     Right: I don’t really get Ludwig (and probably never will); he doesn’t really get me, either.

    

     Right: The other day, Ludwig wore lederhosen (seriously  . . . lederhosen?) to my baseball game.

     Original: But he bought me ice cream afterward, which was nice.

     Wrong: But he bought me ice cream afterward (my favorite!) Which was nice.

     Right: But he bought me ice cream afterward (my favorite!), which was nice.

If, on the other hand, your parenthetical statement is a sentence or more, then simply insert the entire thing into your paragraph as you would any other sentence, only with parentheses around it:

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible.) But my mom really wants me to come.

Note that, as always, the entire parenthetical statement could be removed from the paragraph without a problem:

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. But my mom really wants me to come.

This is why you should make sure that none of the information outside the parentheses refers directly to any of the information inside the parentheses—otherwise, the parenthetical wouldn’t be able to be removed without affecting the flow of information.

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible.) But my mom really wants me to come, so I may need to get permission from my Band Director.

Without the parentheses, that paragraph wouldn’t make sense:

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. But my mom really wants me to come, so I may need to get permission from my Band Director.

In such cases, you’re best off moving more information into the parentheses or getting rid of the parentheses altogether.

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go, but my mom really wants me to come. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible. I may need to get permission from my Band Director.)

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go. (I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year, so that seems like it would be irresponsible.) But my mom really wants me to come (so I may need to get permission from my Band Director).

     My mom and Ludwig are planning a big vacation to Germany this summer, so that he can show us where he grew up. I’m not sure I want to go, since I’d have to skip out on band camp. I’m a section leader this year—skipping seems like it would be irresponsible. But my mom really wants me to come, so I may need to get permission from my Band Director.

Punctuation Problems: Proper Parentheses, Part One

The Short Version

When writing a story, use parentheses as sparingly as possible.

The Long Version

There are some forms of punctuation that are generally frowned upon in professional writing, such as the interrobang (?!), repeated exclamation marks, and emoticons. Using parentheses to create parenthetical statements, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable punctuation usage. So why do I recommend that you do so sparingly?

One of the greatest challenges of writing is getting your thoughts to flow smoothly from one to the next without any hard-to-follow leaps that will be difficult for readers to follow. You want your story to flow naturally and logically, A to B to C to D and so on rather than G to W to T to G again. If this is done well, readers can breeze through hundreds of pages at a time without ever having to pause and figure out what is being said—your thoughts will flow as naturally through their minds as their own thoughts do.

Now, if you read this post, you know that parentheses are specifically supposed to be used to insert information into a sentence or paragraph that is no more than loosely related to the topic at hand—“flavor” text that might be interesting, might be funny, but isn’t actually needed. In other words, parentheses are intended to insert information that will specifically interrupt the smooth, logical progression of thoughts that most writing is intended to achieve. It is hard enough to manage such smooth prose normally; but if you’re adding extraneous thoughts left and right, it’s going to be even more difficult. So use parentheses as sparingly as possible.

What qualifies as “sparingly” will vary depending on the style of story you’re writing. If your story is being narrated—either in first-person by one of the characters or by an omnipotent third-person narrator with its own personality—then you’ll be able to use more parenthetical statements than in other situations. In these situations, parenthetical statements can be used to mimic the often-erratic nature of speech and oral storytelling, to give your protagonist or narrator more of a realistic and engaging personality. 

Third-person-limited and narrator-less third-person-omniscient stories, however, aren’t narrated by characters. In those sorts of stories, parenthetical statements will be more likely to interrupt the flow of the narrative—I would go so far as to recommend avoiding parentheses entirely in such stories, if at all possible.

Found this nice little explanation here.

Punctuation Problems: Separating Subjects From Verbs

If you have been reading the Story Polisher for a while now, you may have noticed that an understanding of the basic parts of the sentence is something I consider very useful (if not essential) for a writer. I try to explain things in such a way that you don’t need to know what a present participle is, much less the exact difference between it and a gerund. I don’t believe that you need to know and remember every grammatical term.

However, you do need to know the central, most basic parts of the sentence: the subject, the verb, and the direct object. So many of the errors that I explain here depend on your knowing these three things. The subject is the primary noun of the sentence, the person or thing that is performing an action. The verb is the action they are performing. The direct object is who or what they are doing something to (and isn’t always necessary for a complete sentence). Each of these parts of the sentence can be a single word:

     Katy       kissed       Gunther.

   Subject      Verb      Direct Object

Or a phrase:

     The red-haired little girl       has read       my favorite book.

                  Subject                       Verb             Direct Object

The ability to identify these three elements in any sentence you read or write is integral to being a good writer. There are so many errors that cannot be avoided if you don’t know where these three parts of the sentence are. For example, take this post that I saw going around Facebook and Twitter on December 31^st:

The problem with this example is simple: that comma should not be there. How do we know? Because it separates the subject of the sentence (Tomorrow) from its verb (is). There are almost no situations where this is permissible. But if you don’t know how to find your subject and verb, then this error will keep popping up.

This error is particularly common in sentences with a long, complex subject. For example:

     The boy that I’d had a crush on for the entire semester, had just given me a rose.

In that example, everything before the comma is the subject of the sentence. Many writers, when faced with such a long subject, feel like there should be a comma somewhere in the sentence. The writers who know how to identify their subjects and verbs, however, know that there should (almost) never be a comma in that part of the sentence. So make sure you always know where your subjects and verbs are—it could save your sentence someday.

P.S.

The only truly common exception to this rule is when you have a clarifying phrase, set apart by commas, between the subject and the verb. Here are some examples (two of which are from the paragraph above this one):

     My parents, Diana and Clark, want to talk to you.

     Many writers, when faced with such a long subject, feel like there should be a comma somewhere in the sentence.

     The writers who know how to identify their subjects and verbs, however, know that there should (almost) never be a comma in that part of the sentence.

If you remember from this post, a phrase that is set apart in this manner—be it with commas, em dashes, or parentheses—should be able to be removed from the sentence without rendering it illegible. That is, if you took the italicized phrases out of the examples above, they would still be whole sentences:

     My parents want to talk to you.

     Many writers feel like there should be a comma somewhere in the sentence.

     The writers who know how to identify their subjects and verbs know that there should (almost) never be a comma in that part of the sentence.

These commas serve to create an interjection, not a pause or break, and will always come in pairs. If you’re not inserting some sort of clarifying information, you probably shouldn’t have any commas between your subject and your verb.

P.P.S.

This rule applies to other breaking punctuation as well: there should generally not be any em dashes, semi-colons, colons, or periods separating your subject from your verb.

Punctuation in Parenthetical Phrases

 A parenthetical phrase is a short statement inserted into the main body of a sentence to give additional information. It is usually set apart from the rest of the sentence by means of commas, em dashes, or parentheses. Some examples:

1. John, my oldest brother, came to see me in the hospital yesterday.
2. The floor was made of stone—or at least it looked and felt like stone—and was freezing cold beneath his feet.
3. She made me pelmeni (a type of Russian dumpling) and baked potatoes for dinner.

The punctuation you should use depends on the necessity and importance of the information you’re inserting. If the information you’re adding is necessary for the reader to understand the sentence, or at least very helpful, then you’ll want to use commas. If the information is important but not actually necessary, or if it doesn’t flow too well with the rest of the sentence—as in the case of example two above—then you should generally use em dashes. If the information is extremely superfluous or disconnected from the rest of the sentence, then you’ll use parentheses.

As was the case with breaking punctuation in this post, there is often more than one possible choice when you’re deciding which punctuation to use with your parenthetical phrase. Which punctuation you use will usually depend on how strongly you want to connect the parenthetical to the rest of the sentence.

Setting apart a parenthetical phrase with em dashes is also a useful tool if the sentence already contains several commas, or if the parenthetical phrase itself contains commas. For example, this sentence:

• Whenever I went to the theater, I would always invite the group, consisting of John, Mandy, and Gus, so that I wouldn't have to sit alone.

reads a little bit more clearly like this:

• Whenever I went to the theater, I would always invite the group—consisting of John, Mandy, and Gus—so that I wouldn't have to sit alone.

Parentheses can also be used in these cases, but be wary about using them too often in fiction. Generally, you should avoid parentheses in your story unless a narrator with a strong personality is speaking—usually in either first-person or third-person omniscient perspective. Even then, parentheses should be used rarely.