on The Write Life:

Parentheses, like the em dash and ellipses, is a piece of punctuation that’s often overused in writing.

In some instances, parentheses can be useful, but more often than not, they’re unnecessary and may even act as a distraction, weakening your writing.

In this guide to parentheses, we explain what parentheses are, the difference between parentheses and brackets, when to use parentheses and when to avoid them, basic grammatical rules and finally, alternatives to parentheses.

Continue reading HERE