Parentheses and brackets
- Parentheses are often used to enclose additional information. You need to place the period outside the parentheses unless the entire sentence is inside the parentheses. Part of the subject of a sentence should not be in parentheses.
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Ex
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Rebecca’s salary was higher (40K per year) last year. |
| Rebecca’s salary was higher last year. (She still earned more than her husband.) | |
| Todd (and his cousin) went fishing for the weekend. | |
| Todd (accompanied by his cousin) went fishing for the weekend. |
- Brackets play a different role than parentheses. They are an interruption or change to a phrase added by someone other than the original speaker or writer to either clarify information or indicate an alteration of a quotes. They are mainly used in academic writing.
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Ex
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"[T]he wedding day was magical for everyone involved." |
| *The brackets indicate that in the original quote "the" wasn’t capitalized and has been changed here. |