7 Uses, 1 Misuse
Parentheses [( )] are pairs of upright curves that indicate a word, phrase, or clause that has been interjected by way of explanation or qualification.
488 Use parentheses to set off an inserted phrase, clause, or sentence that you want to minimize.
• David Jones learned the Russian cuisine under a dour cook named Ivan (a name easily Welshified into Ifan), who had himself served on merchant ships plying the Baltic. (Anthony Burgess)
• A later type of rulers, explicitly and increasingly the servants of Whitehall, and serving only for a limited period (after which they returned to their native country, either to retirement or to some other activity) aimed rather to bring to India the benefits of Western civilization. (T. S. Eliot)
• Sometimes, in the morning, if her feet ached more than usual, Mrs. Harris felt a little low. (Nobody did anything about broken arches in those days, and the common endurance test of old age was to keep going after every step cost something.) She would hang up her towel with a sigh and go into the kitchen, feeling that it was hard to make a start. (Willa Cather)
• Though I have no belief in the power of education to turn public school boys into Newtons (it being quite obvious that, whatever opportunity may be offered, it is only those rare beings desirous of learning and possessing a certain amount of native ability who ever do learn anything), yet I must insist, in my own defense, that the system of mathematical instruction of which, at Eton, I was the unfortunate victim, was calculated not merely to turn my desire into stubborn passive resistance, but also to stifle whatever rudimentary aptitude in this direction I might have possessed. (Aldous Huxley)
489 Use parentheses for clarifying appositives or attributions.
• Outside we have a soprano (Gilda) and a baritone (Rigoletto); inside are a mezzo-soprano (Maddalena) and a tenor (the Duke). (Fred Plotkin)
• I was fortunate to hear the enormously successful novelist Chuck Hogan (The Standoff) talk about his novel Prince of Thieves, which was set in Charlestown, Massachusetts. (Andrew McAleer)
490 Use parentheses to introduce shorthand or familiar names.
• In the young people’s section the benches were placed close together, and when a child’s legs no longer comfortably fitted in the narrow space, it was an indication to the elders that that person could now move into the intermediate area (center church). (Maya Angelou)
• The Russians tracked the U-2 with their radar and made a number of attempts to knock it down with their surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), but the flight was a success. (Stephen Ambrose)
• The Assizes of London are held at the Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey). (Henry Cecil)
• Around 2002, Stone Yamashita was approached by Hewlett-Packard (HP). (Chip Heath and Dan Heath)
491 Use parentheses around numbers or letters when you’re listing complex items in text. (Note that they should come in pairs: preferably “(A),” not “A).”) [The Chicago Manual of Style recommends periods, not parentheses, for vertical lists—as in the third bulleted example.]
• The two motive forces can be represented for the present purpose by two almost axiomatic statements, thus: (1) “An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals,” and (2) “Officials make work for each other.” (C. Northcote Parkinson)
• Mill’s Principles carefully distinguished three cases of value determination: (1) with perpendicular supply curves, (2) with horizontal supply curves, and (3) with upward-sloping supply curves. (Thomas Sowell)
• Now for your questions.
(1) Life for me is real as I believe it to be a spark of the Divine.
(2) Religion not in the conventional but in the broadest sense helps me to have a glimpse of the Divine essence. This glimpse is impossible without full development of the moral sense. Hence religion and morality are, for me, synonymous terms.
(3) Striving for full realization keeps me going.
(4) This striving is the source of whatever inspiration and energy I possess.
(5) My treasure lies in battling against darkness and all forces of evil.
(Mohandas K. Gandhi)
492 Use parentheses to denote subparts in a citation.
• The License and Agreement requires the publication of various programmes; for instance, Clause 15(2) orders the broadcast of “an impartial account day by day prepared by professional reporters of the proceedings in both Houses of the United Kingdom Parliament.” (Harry Street)
• The Government reads § 1089(e) simply to shore up § 1089(a)’s immunization of medical personnel against tort liability. (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg)
493 Place parentheses correctly in relation to other punctuation, so that terminal punctuation goes outside the closing parentheses unless (1) the entire sentence is parenthetical or (2) the parenthetical matter requires a question mark or an exclamation mark.
• Married couples split up with dismaying consequences (Truman Van Brunt abandons Christina, and their son Walker betrays and loses his Jessica). (Mark C. Carnes)
• Lying on the lawn beneath the tree in both pictures are three barely distinguishable figures. (They are thought to be Camille, Monet’s first wife, Sisley, and Sisley’s wife.) (John Berger)
• One great mistake made by many of the scholarly poets of the Renaissance was their thinking that the ancients were all alike and equally valuable, the mistake of not seeing that the ancient poets differed as individuals, and had different ideals, which they followed in different ways. (On the other hand, there are many examples of censure of the ancients, leading later to the dispute of ancients and moderns, where the upholders of the moderns held the ancients were not classical enough, and that the moderns could beat them at their own game.) (W. P. Ker)
• A speech can be similarly X-rayed or photographed and its structure revealed. If one examined such a speechgraph (what else could it be called?), there would be seen symbols such as squares, circles, and lines. (Louis Nizer)
494 Use parentheses to enclose a brief aside, even as short as a single exclamation mark or question mark.
• James E. Robinson, in a recent study, considers that the marriage (!) of Bottom and Titania translates the comprehension of the relation of nature and experience into comic myth. (Hallett Smith)
Preventing Misused Parentheses
495 Never use a comma before an opening parenthesis.
Not this: Some of the college players find match play, (which produced Travers, Jones, Little, Littler, Palmer, Nicklaus, et al., as national champions) intolerable.
But this: Some of the college players find match play (which produced Travers, Jones, Little, Littler, Palmer, Nicklaus, et al., as national champions) intolerable.
Not this: Macduff’s grief, (as Malcolm has urged) is converted to expedient anger.
But this: Macduff’s grief (as Malcolm has urged) is converted to expedient anger.