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

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

Square brackets are supposed to be for parenthetical statements nested inside other parentheticals, which does happen from time to time. As far as I know, squirrelly brackets are for a third layer of the same type of thing, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it happen.

[schonste.livejournal.com]

I've seen in grammar books that only parentheses end up being used within parentheses and more and more. There's actually a really funny grammar book that I can't remember the title of where the author really emphasizes this by pointing out something (and then explains further (even though it's not really necessary (but you could say that it's the only way to get the point across (yet one would expect that the one reading this would understand the complexities of parentheses (but perhaps they are reading this because they do not understand and do not care about complexities (but shouldn't anyone who actually reads about grammar care (ah well, it doesn't really matter))))))).

And that is the proper use.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I'm not positive, but I think it's more like they've historically been used both ways, but that a trend towards mandating the alternating ([( pattern and excluding nested parentheses to avoid confusion probably started in the 18th or 19th century, which was the time of the first major trend of writing prescriptive grammar/style guides for English.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've seen them as third-layer brackets before, but I guess that doesn't come up very often. Wikipedia supports that, though.