How to use parenthesis in a sentence
18 example sentences · noun
Parenthesis means a clause, phrase or word which is inserted (usually for explanation or amplification) into a passage which is already grammatically complete, and usually marked off with brackets, commas or dashes. Example: “Parenthetical referencing is a citation style which uses in-line citations enclosed within parentheses.”
Examples of parenthesis by meaning
nounA clause, phrase or word which is inserted (usually for explanation or amplification) into a passage which is already...
- How expressive this little parenthesis: "Sakuntalâ makes a chiding gesture with her finger"!1903, Karl Mantzius, A History of Theatrical Art in Ancient and Modern Times, page 86
nounEither of a pair of brackets, especially (mainly US) round brackets, ( and ) (used to enclose parenthetical material in...
- This was achieved by presenting etymons from Hindustani in the Devanagari script followed by a transliteration in the Roman alphabet in parentheses.2018, James Lambert, “Anglo-Indian slang in dictionaries on historical principles”, in World Englishes, volume 37, page 255
More sentences with parenthesis
- Parenthetical referencing is a citation style which uses in-line citations enclosed within parentheses.From the entry in-line
- The turbofish operator in generic functions appears right after the function name and before the parenthesis.2019 January 31, Rahul Sharma, Vesa Kaihlavirta, Mastering Rust, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 122. From the entry turbofish
- The etymologies gave words from Hindustani in the Devanagari script accompanied by transliterations in parentheses.2018, James Lambert, “Anglo-Indian slang in dictionaries on historical principles”, in World Englishes, volume 37, page 251. From the entry Devanagari
- When the skunked term has a different meaning, it's given in parentheses.2013, Ben Yagoda, How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Problems and the Best Ways to Avoid Them, Penguin, →ISBN. From the entry skunked term
- The boy sits beside him and two of them are locked in a parenthesis of mutual zonkedness.2009 October 4, Geoff Pevere, “The Death of Bunny Munro presents debauched anti-hero”, in Toronto Star. From the entry zonkedness
- In √a̅+̅b̅, the horizontal bar or vinculum is actually a parenthesis that groups a+b.a. 1992, Frederick Mosteller, “Writing about Numbers”, in John C. Bailar III, Frederick Mosteller, editors, Medical Uses of Statistics…. From the entry square root
- In parenthesis after each modern Pinyin, romanization of the original Chinese characters has been added.1981, W. B. Harland, “Late Precambrian tilloid in North Korea”, in M. J. Hambrey, W. B. Harland, editors, Earth's pre-Pleistocene Glacial…. From the entry Haizhou
- That choice would leave the supertopic Classroom Experiences open, a situation that can be represented with an open parenthesis.2008, Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, Heidi E. Hamilton, The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, page 676. From the entry supertopic
- Common name followed by Latin binomial in parentheses.1991, Daniel W. Gade, “Weeds in Vermont as Tokens of Socioeconomic Change”, in Geographical Review, volume 81, number 2, →JSTOR, page 169. From the entry binomial
- Subparagraphs are identified by lower case alphabetics followed by numerics and alphabetics in parentheses and then underlined numerics and alphabetics.1987, United States. Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Acquisition & Logistics) ·, MILSTAMP TACs, page 15. From the entry alphabetic
- Why then do I feel all stabby when I get a message that ends with three short marks: a colon, a hyphen and a parenthesis?2009 November 30, Mary Elizabeth Williams, “Death to Smiley”, in Salon. From the entry stabby
- A remark intended humorously is often indicated by the letter G in parentheses, for "grin," or by a sideways happy face built from punctuation marks.[1992 December 1, William Grimes, “Computer as a Cultural Tool: Chatter Mounts on Every Topic”, in The New York Times, archived from the…. From the entry emoticon
- In this case, the problem is easily solved by the same parentheses that ought to be used to prevent misnesting of arithmetic operations.1992, NeXT Computer, Inc, NeXTSTEP Development Tools and Techniques: Release 3, page 12-30. From the entry misnest
- In parentheses, the man wrote “chaoxian,” which means North Korea, in Roman letters — an apparent effort to avoid mentioning the country by name using Chinese characters.2019 July 22, Ellen Nakashima, Gerry Shih, John Hudson, “Leaked documents reveal Huawei’s secret operations to build North Korea’s…. From the entry Chaoxian
- For the purpose of this book, keep in mind that we are using Tongyong Pinyin throughout, with Hanyu Pinyin in parentheses when the spelling is different.2006, David C. King, Taiwan (Enchantment of the World), Children's Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 89. From the entry Tongyong Pinyin
- I'm riddled at the hips and knees, roundsided as parentheses since my shrunken spine has known osteoporosis and my extremities have shriveled into lacy filigrees, breakable as glass on stone.1997, The American Scholar - Volume 66, page 120. From the entry roundsided
Meaning of parenthesis
- noun A clause, phrase or word which is inserted (usually for explanation or amplification) into a passage which is already grammatically complete, and usually marked off with brackets, commas or dashes.
- noun Either of a pair of brackets, especially (mainly US) round brackets, ( and ) (used to enclose parenthetical material in a text).
- noun A digression; the use of such digressions.
Questions about parenthesis in a sentence
- How do you use parenthesis in a sentence?
- Parenthesis is used as a noun. For example: “Parenthetical referencing is a citation style which uses in-line citations enclosed within parentheses.”
- What is a short sentence with parenthesis?
- “Common name followed by Latin binomial in parentheses.”
- What does parenthesis mean?
- Parenthesis means a clause, phrase or word which is inserted (usually for explanation or amplification) into a passage which is already grammatically complete, and usually marked off with brackets, commas or dashes.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: parenthesis (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “How to use parenthesis in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/parenthesis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
