There’s no such thing as a bad punctuation mark. They all serve important purposes!
The fourteen marks in English include the period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, colon, semicolon, dash, hyphen, brackets, braces, parentheses, apostrophe, quotation marks, and ellipsis.
Today, let’s chat about parentheses. They can be helpful when used sparingly to add clarifying or important information.
However, overuse can jar and distract readers, clutter your writing, or make your work appear amateurish.
Instead, integrate the extra details smoothly into your sentences or drop them altogether.
Use parentheses for necessities like acronyms or other important details; otherwise, keep them minimal.
What’s your take? Do you embrace or avoid parentheses?
Always remember, the only way to do this wrong is to not do it at all!
I (John Roche) think (as in my thought process) that (a word you hate) you (Patricia Charpentier) may (as opposed to might) have made your (Patricia Carpantier) point.
EM DASHES — PRAISE THE LORD.
Great, little man. Clarified a lot. Jake
Good episode. Always a nice reminder when writing, so thank you, Patricia. I don’t use those “little cupped hands” very often.
I seldom use parentheses in writing. I mostly use them in emails to clarify a thought to someone and by experience it can backfire from lack of clarity. Just as the use of emojis can lead to misinterpretation. I’ d rather master the art of delivering a clear message even if it means more research to get my point across or keep my reader interested. I appreciate that you counted them for us so I can verify how some translate in French, assuming we have the same fourteen. (Love this topic).(:
LOL, my grammar and use of punctuation is so bad, I think I missed that year of school.
I use parentheses occasionally to specify or include items .