Parenthesis Examples: Figures of Speech For Students

Parenthesis Examples: When someone asks you to use parenthesis appropriately for a project that you might be working on, don’t look too surprised. A parenthesis, in layman’s terms, is nothing but the humble bracket that needs to be used as and when required when writing. Most people know what brackets are, but are not familiar with how, when and where to put them in good use. Brackets or parentheses are punctuation marks that are used in the formation of sentences to give more order and present well the chosen set of words or information. There are three main types of brackets: round brackets – ( ), square brackets – [ ], and curly brackets – { }. There are also four other kinds of lesser used brackets: angle brackets ? ? – inequality signs – < >, angular quote brackets – ??, and corner brackets ? ?. If you have always wanted to know how, where and when to use brackets, read on to discover for yourself a set of examples that will help you understand better how to use parenthesis in writing. These examples focus on the three most commonly used and most important types of brackets.

Examples Of Parenthesis

Round Brackets – ( ) 

Round brackets make for the most commonly used type of brackets. These brackets are also known as round brackets, open brackets or simply, brackets. Round brackets are used when the purpose is to try and include information that can otherwise be omitted. By including the information that is to be included, the meaning of the sentence shouldn’t be altered or destroyed. Brackets are powerful breaks in a flow of words, a subtler version of a break being commas, thus throwing light on why brackets are used sparingly, while commas are almost used at will. Overusing brackets will only make sentences seem poorly structured and ambiguous.

Examples:

• David (Tim’s brother) fought like a lion because he had no choice but to.
• He started off his career by working as a journalist with TOI (Times of India).
• Smith (Peterson’s father) was quick to come to the rescue of his son.
• Ryan was not only an extremely good athlete but also a part of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Square Brackets – [ ] 

Square brackets, also known as closed brackets or simply brackets are used when the purpose is to include information or material that was previously excluded by the original author. The use of square brackets can be noticed in quoted text. Square brackets can be used when a letter needs to be added to a word and also when a quote or sentence needs to be modified. Square brackets are even used when the purpose of translation needs to be met.

Examples:

• He love[d] that he was asked to be a part of the preparations for her wedding.
• When the going gets tough, Anuja is the kind of person who pull[s] her socks and takes challenges head on.
• When you think you’ve had enough of one particular obsession, it would do you good to move on to a host of other obsession[s].
• X says: ‘I love to eat burgers.’ – She love[s] to eat burgers.
• X says: ‘Although you are trying to hide from me, I know that you are in there, waiting for me to come and discover you.’ – Although he tries to hide from her, she know[s] that he is in there, waiting for her to come and discover him.
• He was an expert at an ancient martial art [Kung Fu] that the country China is noted for.
• The only language he could speak was the language [Malayalam] that the people of Kerala are so familiar with.

Apart from the above-mentioned uses of square brackets, there are quite a number of other uses as well. Square brackets can be used in phonetic transcriptions and chemistry, where the concentration of a substance is denoted the use of square brackets. Another common use for square brackets can be noticed in computer programming, where an array of elements are displayed with the assistance of square brackets.

Curly Brackets – { } 

Curly brackets are mostly used in literature when a series of choices need to be made. These choices are put in curly brackets because they are equal or similar in nature. Curly brackets can also be noticed in musical notation where they are used to mark repetitions. Same is the case with poetry. However, this is something that only a musician can relate to. In programming languages, curly brackets stand to signify the enclosing of a large or small number of statements. A very informal use of curly brackets comes when the same are used when chatting with a person over the internet. Here, curly brackets stand to represent hugs. Curly brackets have a large number of secondary names to go by: side boobs, curly brackets, definite brackets, swirly brackets, curly braces, birdie brackets, Scottish brackets, squirrelly brackets, braces, gull wings, fancy brackets, or squiggly brackets.

Examples:

• Please choose amongst the soft drinks {Pepsi, Miranda, Appy, Thumbs-Up} and return to your respective places.
• Pick amongst the following {red shirt, pink shirt, white shirt, green shirt, yellow shirt} and leave the premises.

Hopefully, these examples on parenthesis will help you use this figure of speech in a better way. However, this does not mean that you overuse them. Most people use brackets at the most inappropriate of places, but you don’t need be a part of that lot, because you now know what comes where and what comes when.