Why brackets are used

Outside the realm of emoticons, parentheses always come in pairs. They can enclose a single word, a phrase, or even an entire sentence. Typically, the words inside the parentheses provide extra information about something else in the sentence. While walking down the street paying more attention to her phone than to her feet , Catherine tripped over the curb and sprained her ankle.

Grammarly can save you from misspellings, grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and other writing issues on all your favorite websites. Brackets , sometimes called square brackets, are most often used to show that words have been added to a direct quotation. Sometimes, when quoting a person or document, adding a word or two is necessary to provide enough context for the quote to make sense.

But you can add bracketed information to make the context clear. An alternative approach is to note the emphasis outside the quotation, in parentheses, either as a separate sentence immediately after the sentence containing the quotation:.

If the original material contains language you deem inappropriate for your audience, brackets can be used to remove it. In the rare event that parentheses are required within parentheses, use brackets instead.

This is one of the few uses of brackets outside of quotations. In his twenties, he toured the country giving lectures to physics students subsequently published as M-theory for Morons [].

In his twenties, he toured the country giving lectures to physics students subsequently published as M-theory for Morons If parentheses or brackets are used at the end of a sentence, the period should be placed outside, as the final punctuation: They eventually decided to settle in the United States Debbie's home.

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