That Disgraceful, Disreputable, (Wonderful) Form of Punctuation: The Parenthesis

sudo_cowsay

I don't know why but I seem to use more parenthesis (even if I should be using commas).

oska

I don't like the two examples of parenthesis used in the title & subtitle of this piece, where they put wonderful and perfect in parentheses before a noun phrase. Putting adjectives in parentheses before a noun (phrase) is, yes, a useful device but those adjectives should usually be words that give more (but not necessary) information, rather than purely subjective qualifiers such as the two that the author uses. I know they're probably being a bit tongue in cheek but it still grates a little that these were the two examples they led with.

pfdietz

And not a single mention of Lisp? Tsk.

golol

I just had thw thought: aren't parentheses just punctuation denoting an inline footnote?

6LLvveMx2koXfwn

Came for comments with an unreasonable amount of parenthesis; not disappointed.

jurip

The one place where I find parenthesis really jarring is in the middle of quotes. I just can't wrap my head around something like > "I'm sending (via email) an encrypted message", Alice said to Bob Especially in a book that's been supposedly copy edited. Em dashes or commas or just a plain run-on sentences feel much more appropriate for the general lack of structure in real speech.

pseingatl

Now having a revival because AI killed the em dash.

radarsat1

I used to use them very frequently. It took noticing that I was parenthesizing the second half of almost every sentence I wrote (to add a bit more info, like this), to make me go back and evaluate if I could remove them and replace with commas, or just break the sentence. I found that it was possible on almost all cases. Since then, I started doing this automatically as I started writing a "(" and then I kind of naturally stopped using parentheses so much. It was a bad habit that I somehow formed and found a means to self-correct.

stillpointlab

One of my pet peeves is people opening a parenthesis and never closing it. It's like my brain pushes the parenthetical into a stack and when I get to the end of the paragraph it throws an error. I definitely overuse parenthesis and I haven't found a way to rid myself of the habit (as I managed to mostly rid myself of the habit of using semi-colons).

xebulon

"He was certainly a flamboyantly creative writer and inspired teacher; yet one can take him seriously here: “Pricks” performed “tricks” as punctuation became a vehicle to think about the technological revolutions of the time, gender relationships, and literary genres reflecting social and historical concerns like kingship or geographical exploration." absolute trainwreck.