How To Use Commas And Parentheses

You could choose to punctuate a parenthetical phrase within a sentence with commas or em dashes rather than parentheses.

How to use commas and parentheses. Let s start with those quiet parentheses. If material in parentheses ends a sentence the period goes after the parentheses. Parentheses always used in pairs allow a writer to provide additional information. The parenthetical material might be a single word a fragment or multiple complete sentences. Peter cleaned his room before going out to play basketball.

Commas and parentheses are often used together but they serve separate purposes within a sentence. Commas can be used to separate a parenthesis from the rest of the sentence. The chicago manual of style online explains that parentheses which are stronger than commas or dashes set off material from the surrounding text adding that. Parentheses are used to give additional information to the reader information that would disrupt the flow of the sentence if written as a nonrestrictive clause. Commas could have been used in the first example.

A parenthesis is additional information that is not essential to the meaning of the sentence i e it could be removed it is also possible to use dashes or parentheses brackets to offset a parenthesis. Thus commas should be used with parentheses only if the sentence would require a comma without the parentheses. Like dashes but unlike commas parentheses can set off text that has no grammatical relationship to the rest of the sentence the style guide gives these examples. He gave me a nice bonus 500. Commas may be placed after the closing parenthesis but not before either the opening or the closing parenthesis.

Using commas for a parenthesis. How to use not abuse parentheses by erika suffern. Parentheses aren t the only punctuation option for parenthetical expressions. Parentheses are the quiet whisper of an aside commas are the conversational voice of a friend walking by your desk and dashes are the yowl of a pirate dashing into a fray. If it is the sentence must be recast.

If parentheses are used around an area code they are also static though today most writers omit parentheses around area codes. The use of parentheses indicates that the writer considered the information less important almost an afterthought. The example below illustrates this point. Like some other punctuation marks parentheses are used in prose to set apart some text in a sentence such as an explanation observation aside or digression. In general you can think of parentheses commas and dashes as a continuum of marks.