Parenthesis () are punctuation marks that are always used in pairs and contain material that is secondary to the meaning of a sentence. A sentence should make sense if you delete any text within parentheses and the parentheses.

EXAMPLES

• The original Robocop is the best movie I have seen (so far).
• Your spinach and garlic salad is one of the most delicious (and nutritious) foods I have ever tasted!

Attribution

This chapter is an adaptation of Parenthesis by Josh Woods, editor and contributor, as well as an unnamed author (by request from the original publisher), and other authors named separately and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted. You can download this book free at The Writing Textbook Copyright © 2021.