I’ve been reading a nonfiction book for pleasure and noticed how it uses brackets, parentheses for US readers, in the writing. The book’s tone is informal, chatty and it uses lots of asides.

During my A-Levels, exams taken by students in England and Wales aged sixteen to eighteen, having been told by my English Literature teacher that she would prefer it if we didn’t use brackets/parentheses for formal writing, I got into the habit of not using them.

However, in fiction, brackets/ parentheses are normally used sparingly as they draw the eye more than other ways to denote asides or non-essential information such as commas or en or em dashes.

If you use brackets/parentheses, the full stop/period goes outside the bracket if the information is a sentence fragment.

He agreed to go to the cinema (very grudgingly).

It goes inside the bracket if the information is a full sentence.

He agreed to go to the cinema. (She remembered it had taken a lot of persuasion.)

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