Hi everyone,
I'd like some opinions about the use of bracketed phrases, (like asides. Is it acceptable or to be avoided?
Thanks

In writing? To be avoided, I'd say, unless you're writing a factual account of something, in which case it's ok.

Hi Elspeth,

If you write prose then do not use brackets at all. The use is old fashioned and unnecessary. There are always the small dashes and commas and they do not have the 'brick wall' effect of brackets.

On the other hand brackets can be very useful in non-fictional writing, reporting and producing Reports.

Len

<Added>

There is a recognised use for brackets in Script preparation and, within this context, they are very useful.

Thanks IB and Len for getting back to me so quickly.

To bracket or not to bracket? Well, I may have to disagree with everyone here. Had I been commenting on this last week I would have concurred - however, now I'm reading a fabulously original collection of short stories by David Foster Wallace in which he makes fairly extensive use of bracketing and to great effect. I would conclude that it is dependent upon individual writing style and choice.

BoBo

Snap Bobo!

In principle I think it’s best to avoid the use of brackets in fiction but I’m half way through reading Hollowpoint by Rob Reuland (his first novel, I believe – see they’re OK in non-fiction) and he uses them very effectively.

If anyone’s interested I can recommend it as an example of a New York Street story – so long as you accept from the outset that you’re only going to understand two-thirds of the dialogue!

Cheers,
Dee.

I can't remember the last time I read a book without them ( and I read a lot!). If they work for Roddy Doyle et al, that's fine by me. :-)

I'm with Len on the use of brackets, they often look as if the writer isn't confident, unless of course, they've become a personal signature in someone's writing. But they are irritating, (to me, anyway), and if you're writing an aside it should be possible to let the reader know it's an aside by the way you write the sentence, rather than by indicating it with brackets. Brackets more often than not stop the flow.

I have to go with the brackets, but as a stylistic device. As some of the others have said, brackets can be very effective.

Anne Marie