Brackets & Parentheses

Updated August 5, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

• Use brackets to set off words or letters in quoted matter that have been added by someone other than the author:
  “She [Willa Cather] is certainly one of the great American writers of the 20th century.”
• Use parentheses to set off nonessential information:
  We spent an hour (more or less) cleaning up.

See also: Parentheses and Brackets