by Jennie Ruby
People do not talk in a straight line. We do not always place one idea after another like footprints on the shore. We interrupt ourselves. We start one idea and then realize that our reader needs additional information before we can complete that idea. So we interrupt ourselves. In print, we have several ways to mark an interruption in a sentence. We use parentheses, dashes, commas, or no punctuation at all to mark different kinds of interruptions.
One way to mark an interruption is to use parentheses. The quintessential parenthetical interruption is a reference to material outside the text, like this:
- see Table 2)
or this:
- (Smith and Jones, 2009, p. 67).
The parentheses signal to the reader that this information can be skipped over when reading the sentence, but referred to if needed for additional information. The Chicago Manual of Style says "Parentheses usually set off material that is less closely related to the rest of the sentence than that enclosed in em dashes or commas."
Here are some examples of how to punctuate parenthetical interruptions.
Parenthetical element inside a sentence and followed by a comma:
- Smith and Jones (2009), who began their research in the 1960s, found…
- Smith and Jones researched the use of aspirin to treat heart attacks (Smith and Jones, 2009).
Parenthetical element outside a sentence:
- The results show that Method A works significantly better. (See Table 2.) Other studies….
Parenthetical interruption followed by a dash interruption:
- These processes were discovered in 2006 (Utz, 2006)-before most researchers even understood their importance–but they have yet to be used in practical applications.
You can use parentheses for text, but be aware that you are implying the text is more extraneous than it would be if you used commas. Here is an example:
- Make sure the aspect ratio checkbox is selected (if it is not, press spacebar to select it).
- Determine whether the aspect ratio checkbox is selected, and if it is not, press the spacebar to select it.
In the first example, you expect the reader not to need the parenthetical information. In the second example, you are pretty sure they will need to press the spacebar.
Next time, we will look at interruptions with em dashes.
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About the Author: Jennie Ruby is a veteran IconLogic trainer and author with titles such as "Editing with Word 2003 and Acrobat 7" and "Editing with MS Word 2007" to her credit. Jennie specializes in electronic editing. At the American Psychological Association, she was manager of electronic publishing and manager of technical editing and journal production. Jennie has an M.A. from George Washington University and is a Certified Technical Trainer (Chauncey Group). She is a publishing professional with 20 years of experience in writing, editing and desktop publishing.