Can you put parentheses inside parentheses

Example: He finally answered after taking five minutes to think that he did not understand the question. Commas could have been used in the first example; a colon could have been used in the second example. The use of parentheses indicates that the writer considered the information less important—almost an afterthought. Rule 2a. Periods go inside parentheses only if an entire sentence is inside the parentheses.

Example: Please read the analysis. You'll be amazed. This is a rule with a lot of wiggle room. An entire sentence in parentheses is often acceptable without an enclosed period:. Example: Please read the analysis you'll be amazed. Rule 2b. Take care to punctuate correctly when punctuation is required both inside and outside parentheses.

Incorrect: Gender differences may reflect underlying continuous attributes, such as personality e. Brackets Use brackets to enclose the values that are the limits of a confidence interval. Example: "when [his own and others'] behaviors were studied" Hanisch, , p. Exception 1: Do not use brackets if the material can be set off easily with commas without confounding meaning: Correct: as Imai, , later concluded Incorrect: as Imai [] later concluded Exception 2: In mathematical material, the placement of brackets and parentheses is reversed; that is, parentheses appear within brackets.

Correct: American Psychological Association. Incorrect: APA. Parentheses Use parentheses to set off structurally independent elements Examples: The patterns were significant see Figure 5.

When a complete sentence is enclosed in parentheses, place punctuation in the sentence inside the parentheses, like this. If only part of a sentence is enclosed in parentheses like this , place punctuation outside the parentheses like this. What would be versus in text is abbreviated vs. The Empire. Other standard Latin abbreviations should also be used in parentheses rather than written out: e. McAdoo , T.

Please submit the following four items with your application: 1 a cover letter, 2 a resume, 3 a college transcript, and 4 a list of professional references. Short translations in unquoted text can be placed in parentheses. Use brackets for translations in quoted text. His knowledge of Portuguese is limited to obrigado thank you and adeus goodbye. If there is uncertainty about the year, a question mark should follow it.

Note that an en dash , rather than hyphen, is used between the years. Table of contents Side-by-side parentheses Nested parentheses. Sometimes you might need to use two parenthetical elements together — for example, when a sentence contains both an acronym and a citation. APA style recommends using a single set of parentheses with a semicolon separating the main elements. Chicago also advises this approach, but allows side-by-side parentheses if their content is entirely unrelated.

If you do use two sets of parentheses, put a space between them. When you want to enclose a set of parentheses inside another set, most style guides recommend using square brackets for the inner element. In British English , parentheses within parentheses are more acceptable.