Brackets (parentheses [stop using them])

If you have something to say, say it, and don’t litter you text with brackets (there are caveats, of course¹). Brackets are a pet peeve of mine. They are often (nearly always) used to add an afterthought. Occasionally, you will see them being used to add (useless) supplementary information to a statement. Sometimes, the information isn’t supplementary but you thought it was. Other times, the information (I received this as feedback on my thesis [dissertation], and it stuck with me. I’d never considered the disruption brackets could bring to the flow of a sentence until it was pointed out to me. Prior to this advice, I would just use them without a second thought. You learn about them in school but nobody tells you about the negative impact they can have on your writing in the same way they don’t tell you avoid exclamation marks. You think you are adding extra detail to a line of thought for free. But, sometimes, you do see things which could be an entire paragraph with a pair of brackets, and are you really suggesting that all of that text was pointless?) is completely out of place. Brackets give the author the luxury of not needing to think how to phrase something because it is not central to the point they are making, and this is at the expense of the reader(!).

I would take the polemical view that you can go the rest of your life without using brackets. The benefit is you’ve now made your writing more concise. The reader no longer needs to follow your meandering train of thought. They get to save some of their precious time. And it benefits you. You now have had to think about what you’re trying to say and that may clarify your own thoughts on a matter.

Practically, use brackets where ever you like in your first draft (I do) along with the typos and the sentences with 50 words in them. Then replace the brackets with commas. If it looks silly, either elevate the statement to be its own sentence or remove the phrase entirely.