: Re: Parentheses in scientific writing I occasionally use parentheses in scientific writing when a piece of information is related to a previous statement but not to the central story. Is it bad

@Debbie451

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@Digital Dracula mentioned it above. I'd use footnotes as asides in scientific writing. When you read research paper or science textbooks, you'll see an asterisk or two every other page, sometimes more. If you want, you can also add footnotes that relate to other chapters, extra sources cited for a bibliography, or things mentioned in the appendix. In short, footnotes can contain anything that might break up the flow of the main point of the text.

Different groups of symbols can represent different kinds of footnotes. The Bible, for example, annotates many different things using (let's just say) letters for references to other verses, asterisks and other symbols for alternative translations of a word/phrase, numbers for commentary, etc.

One cool thing about footnotes is that they can be as long as you want. I've read annotated versions of classic novels that have footnotes take up to two-thirds of a page and several paragraphs long, even with smaller font!

Hope this helps!

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