Chicago Style Workout 66: Parentheses (and Brackets)

Parentheses symbols font shape element made of clouds on blue background over sky

Useful Pairs

Parentheses and brackets (specifically, square brackets) normally come in pairs, as do other types of brackets and braces. Their main job is to set things off from their surroundings.

To find out more—and to test your knowledge of these pairs of related marks—take the quiz.

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual (cited in most of the answers). (For a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online, click here.)

Note: Style guides sometimes disagree. Except for a few details that can be verified in standard dictionaries and encyclopedias and other readily available sources, the answers in this quiz rely on the information in the 17th edition of CMOS.

Chicago Style Workout 66: Parentheses (and Brackets)

1. The word parentheses can apply to both the marks and the words they enclose.
2. Another name for parentheses is round brackets.
3. As sentence punctuation, parentheses most closely resemble which of the following marks?
4. Within a sentence, parentheses should never be used to enclose another complete sentence.
5. In Chicago style, parentheses within parentheses
6. In Chicago style, back-to-back parentheses should always be combined into one set of parentheses.
7. In Chicago style, a comma never immediately precedes an opening parenthesis.
8. In fictional dialogue, parentheses
9. In quoted text, square brackets usually enclose
10. Parentheses and brackets are always used in pairs.

 

Parenthetical clouds by Sergey Novikov / Adobe Stock.

Ready for another quiz? Click here for the full list.

Please see our commenting policy.