Monday’s Mistake for July 12, 2021: How People Get Periods and Parentheses Wrong

Monday’s Mistake for July 12, 2021: How People Get Periods and Parentheses Wrong

Here’s yet another mistake from real life. Do you see the error? “It is true that if you are farming on the moon or in the desert, then hydroponics might make sense (If you have to grow in such a parched landscape.)” It’s a common punctuation error. And it’s about the period inside the parentheses. When you use parentheses, the period goes either inside or outside. How do you know which? If the words inside the parentheses are not a complete sentence, then don’t treat it as such and the period goes outside. If the words inside the...
Monday’s Mistake for July 12, 2021: How People Get Periods and Parentheses Wrong

Monday’s Mistake for May 3, 2021: Parentheses Gone Wild!!

This Monday’s Mistake relates to our new Guide to Punctuation, but also to the ever-important rule to choose clarity! Here’s the sentence: “The digital front-end (website, app, store, etc.) and the back-end (like customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resources planning (ERP) and billing systems) need to sync with each other.” Do you see a problem with it? I do: confusion. Technically, the writer used parentheses correctly, but they lost the clarity. The poor reader has to work to get through this forest of...