just like all those other parentheticals

[cimorene]

Dear Badfic Writers,

Brackets ({}) and square brackets ([]) have their own purposes. They are not just a pair of parentheses dressed up in their own very special and unique snowflake outfits for when you are writing a story and it doesn't seem special enough with plain punctuation.

Thanks for your attention to this matter,
cim

Comments

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Besides being used in scholarly texts for clarification, omission, etc, and nested inside parenthetical statements, they're often used for stage directions in various forms of script formatting, I believe.