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?
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.
Stand over the person reading it and interject.
Usually by my third edit I’m ready to send. Of course, by then I’ve begun to question if anyone is interested in my option anyway and why am I sending this email? They probably know all this already and I’m too stupid to have realized it.
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.
The thing is - and I say that from experience (being somewhat on the ADHD spectrum myself) - that there are no limits to how many of these you can use; or at least that’s how it feels to me (sorry!).
i do this; i just have so much to say, and there are only so many conjugations and commas you can get away with – without it becoming a run-on sentence (i may have a run-on mind).
That’s called ADHD, but I like the name, so we can use both I guess.
Semicolon ftw
im like small sentence (heres some back story though (and some deeper context thats needed (also something vaguely related to thing))).
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’m getting flashes of David Foster Wallace.
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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.
“Nested Parentheticals” can totally be the title of my 15,000 word autobiography. lol
{Nested [Parentheticals] - (An Autobiography), By Admiral Patrick}
Fuck (Well happens to me (sometimes even nested))
Linus Torvalds used nested parentheses in his famous Linux announcement email (1991-08-25) so I think precedent says they’re OK.
Nested parenthesis is fairly common in most programming languages.
Last time I checked, we were talking about English, not Lisp.
Most programming languages are written in English, yes.
Most programming language don’t care if it’s written in English
Is this an adhd thing?! I haven’t been diagnosed but this community makes me think too many times “i thought it was just me”.
Because of the tweet did i have to remove my bonus thought it felt unnatural in this context 😂
Back on track: Sometimes do i want to add a parentes in a parents and it hurts every time.
No. A lot of “ADHD thing” tweets/memes are just quirks common across a wide spectrum of people. That they happen to also be common in those with ADHD is just coincidental.
For parentheses specifically, it’s just a personal writing habit, and there are other ways to communicate “a thought followed by a bonus thought” without having to use them — hell, parenthetical clauses themselves don’t have to use them. Parentheses in particular are probably a result of some people being taught that “a sentence is a complete thought”, which is a nice description for someone just learning grammar, but also not actually true.
