I do this so much at work and have to constantly remind myself not to overdo it (otherwise people will think I’m crazy).
I’ve learned to back off and realize that commas, instead of parentheses, often work just fine.
But I’ve already used commas to add more information to the sentence, how can I fit in more information without parentheses?
Stand over the person reading it and interject.
Consider the humble “em dash” — some people use it to interject a completely different sentence in the middle of another — the next time you’re trying to avoid parentheses.
Occasionally replace the parenthesis with a semicolon – or dashes – and you can get away with it more often.
I am guilty of overusing em dashes — I just think they’re aesthetically pleasing, even if they’re often unnecessary.
It gets fun when the side thought is longer than the original and starts getting side thoughts of its own. The context needs more context or nobody will get it.
I like to use ellipses cause I never fully finish a thought…
oh god I do this all the time, excessively, and have to rewrite emails and posts multiple times to get rid of them as much as possible. sometimes I’ll be writing a parenthetical and need to nest others within it…
It’s hard.
I always wish it was easy to “hyperlink” parts of my sentence. So that they could hover over it and see my explanation for that part. But alas, that would be too much work.
I do it quite often here and I think of them as footnotes to my writing, because they are tangential thoughts, but still important to what I’m trying to express that it shouldn’t be considered a bonus: the asides are more like a public “note to self”.
It also makes the writing feel more raw and stream of conscience-y. (I don’t have a better word to describe it.)
stream of conscience-y
I think that’s why I relate to the OP tweet so much. When I’m writing a text or comment, it’s usually in a inner-voice type of thing where I’m imagining myself speaking directly to the person. And I definitely speak with lots of parenthetical “bonus thoughts”
When I’m writing out something important, an official letter or work email, etc. I take my time to form the full thoughts and put that all down in writing as properly as I’m able to.
For work email, I suggest writing it as simply and direct as possible while still being polite. People really don’t like reading essays for work emails.
