Question

Identify the sentence(s) that use parentheses correctly.

• A. My sister (and I) both were invited to their wedding.
• B. April (and her dog Sam) are always welcome to our home.
• C. The show will be aired at 8 p.m. (IST) on ABC news.
• D. After a week of shooting, the crew was tired of his mannerisms (or rather, lack of it).

Answer 1

Answer: (C), (D)

The show will be aired at 8 p.m. (IST) on ABC news.
After a week of shooting, the crew was tired of his mannerisms (or rather, lack of it).

The punctuation mark, parentheses ( ), is used to enclose additional or extra information in a sentence, without influencing that sentence grammatically (the single bracket is called parenthesis whereas in a pair, ( ) is called parentheses). If the words enclosed in the parentheses are omitted, then the sentence won't be affected grammatically. If you look at options C and D, you'll see that the information in the parentheses "IST" and "or rather, lack of it" is additional. IST is a time zone and time zones are usually enclosed in parentheses, and "or rather, lack of it" is an extra, when omitted the sentence is not affected and is still complete. Hence these sentences use parentheses correctly, and options C and D are correct. In option A, when the phrase "and I" is removed from the sentence, the resulting sentence sounds incomplete, as "both" can't refer to the sister alone. The same goes for option B, April is one person and "are" is used for plural nouns. Hence in these sentences the parentheses haven't been used correctly and options A and B are wrong.