: Re: How to use parentheses Parentheses have many uses; I find myself reaching for them often. Increasingly though, I realise I can convey the same meaning without parentheses with little or only

@Radia543

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You say the first example "suffers from the fluidity problem." That is because it was meant to suffer from the fluidity problem. It is a kind of anacoluthon—usually set off by dashes—which is an intentional break in sentence construction, meant to disrupt the flow for a rhetorical effect.

In the second case, parentheses offer a quick way to add information into the flow of the sentence without awkward or excessive addition of syntax. To omit the parentheses there and still add examples, one would have to add extra words:

My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident involving lightning at a picnic when I was three.

That's still parenthetical information and it might benefit from commas, but the original version involving two words in parentheses conveys all that information in a more compact style.

In the third example, the parentheses are used as an aside, a turning away from the main narrative thrust to amplify a point that may deviate from the main narrative thread. It is impossible to tell whether it does so without more context.

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