Large Numbers Podcasts

One of the least used, and least understood, marks of punctuation is the bracket. Used in pairs, brackets look like squared parentheses, and are often mistakenly employed in place of them. But brackets do have separate, specific functions. As a rule, brackets are used to indicate a writer's comments, corrections, or criticisms within text written by someone else. For example, if a quotation includes a pronoun, but the noun referred to is not given, the writer can insert the noun in brackets to help the reader. Consider this example: …the document clearly states, "The committee discovered that she [Marla] had inventoried that room." Without the noun "Marla" in brackets, the reader would not know who had inventoried the room. Brackets are also used to separate a writer's editorial comments from the actual quotation, as in this example: Our very persuasive salesperson sold us on what he called "the [supposedly] newest, most efficient equipment available." The word "supposedly" is placed in brackets because it is the writer's comment within the quotation of the salesman's words. Finally, brackets are inserted around the word sic to indicate that a grammatical or spelling error is part of the original quotation, and not the writer's mistake, as in this example: The senator's memo says, "The need for action is urgenting [sic] us to pass this bill." In this case, the bracketed word sic follows the grammatically incorrect verb. If you use brackets sparingly to help clarify or comment on someone else's words, you will be using them correctly. You can learn more about using brackets on page 201 of of Write for Business: A Compact Guide to Writing and Communicating in the Workplace. Podcast read less