Why do quotes have parentheses

If I finish a sentence with a bracket should the full stop be inside or outside the bracket? What is the difference between dashes and brackets? Why use brackets over dashes? What do brackets around the first letter of a sentence mean? Sometimes I will see a sentence See all questions in Parentheses and Brackets.

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Search the website Search Form What are you looking for? Search Icon Looking for a specific person? Well, I must say, Algernon, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or to die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd. Nor do I in any way approve of the modern sympathy with invalids. I consider it morbid. Illness of any kind is hardly a thing to be encouraged in others.

Health is the primary duty of life. I am always telling that to your poor uncle, but he never seems to take much notice. I should be much obliged if you would ask Mr. Bunbury, from me, to be kind enough not to have a relapse on Saturday, for I rely on you to arrange my music for me. It is my last reception, and one wants something that will encourage conversation, particularly at the end of the season when every one has practically said whatever they had to say, which, in most cases, was probably not much.

If you were to quote the passage, it may appear that something has been removed from the quote. So how can we indicate that this is not the case? If you think back to the bracket rules we just discussed, you may remember that [ sic ] can be used to show that an error was in the original. In a similar practice, we can enclose the ellipsis in brackets to show it appeared in the original work:.

I am always telling that to your poor uncle, but he never seems to take much notice [. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Grammar: Punctuation. Search for:. Brackets, Parentheses, and Ellipses Parentheses Parentheses are most often used to identify material that acts as an aside such as this brief comment or to add incidental information.

For example: Typically, suppliers specify air to cloth ratios of or higher. Note: In technical writing, there are additional rules for using parentheses, which can be more nuanced. Practice Have the parentheses been used correctly in the following sentences? Community Bot 1. Kosmonaut Kosmonaut 49k 10 10 gold badges silver badges bronze badges.

Does this practice have a name for itself? Kosmonaut, And what happens when the quote itself has square brackets? ThorSummoner "Bracketed insertions" or "[i]ntegrat[ing] quotation with brackets" if I believe writingcommons. This is not only in quotes , but that's its most common usage: Original: "I returned there yesterday, 2 hours after it happened" Quote: The criminal admitted: "I returned [to the crime scene] yesterday, 2 hours after [the murder] happened" Square brackets are not ONLY used in quotes.

Although not all bibles do this, one notable bible that did do this was "The Geneva Bible" The Geneva Bible translators gave particular attention to retaining the flavor and sense of the original Hebrew. Example: Daniel And to them the principal court official went assigning names.

OneProton OneProton 4, 4 4 gold badges 22 22 silver badges 25 25 bronze badges. Not always "added". As Kosmonaut's answer points out, they are often used to indicate that something has been edited : when changing tenses, correcting spellings, etc.

In any case, the square brackets just mean "this is not present in the original". That's why I used "added" insomuch as it adds "clarity". Words may or may not have been added, but contextual clarity has definitely been added.

I was simply pointing out that it's not only used in quotations, but also translations. The usage, therefore, is more broad than that of only being used in a quotation.