Make the point in each of your sentences without using parentheses. Don’t use parentheses in place of commas, to enclose a complete sentence, or to include unnecessary information or an afterthought.
You can use parentheses to introduce an abbreviation.
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- Correct
- Use the Drucare Search Processing Language (SPL) to search your data.
- Incorrect
- Use SPL (the Drucare Search Processing Language) to search your data.
You can use parentheses when explaining that a task is optional in a procedure.
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- Correct
- (Optional) Type context for the task in a new paragraph.
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- Incorrect
- Optional: Type context for the task in a new paragraph.
- Type context for the task in a new paragraph (optional).
You can also use parentheses when writing about one or more fields in statistical commands and charting functions for SPL. See the following example:
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Use with
earliest(x)andlatest(x)to calculate the rate of increase.
Don’t write a lowercase “s” or “es” in parentheses, “(s)” or “(es)”, after a noun to indicate both singular and plural. Choose the best option for your documentation.