Parenthèse

Parenthèse is a punctuation mark pair consisting of two curved brackets used in French and many other languages to enclose text that is incidental, clarifying, or an aside within a sentence. The marks are opening "(" and closing ")", and they enclose material that could be omitted without breaking the grammatical structure. In mathematics, programming, and logic, parentheses serve to group terms, indicate function arguments, or denote coordinates and intervals. They also signal order of operations and function composition.

Etymology and history: The French word parenthèse comes from the Latin parenthesis, which itself derives from the Greek parénthesis meaning insertion or putting beside, from para “beside” and thesis “placing.” The use of brackets traces to classical manuscripts and was formalized with early printing; today parentheses are standard punctuation in many languages, alongside other bracketing marks such as square brackets and curly braces.

Rhetorical and typographic use: In literature, a parenthetical remark is a digression inserted into a sentence and set off by parentheses or sometimes by dashes. In typography, the spacing around parentheses follows language-specific conventions, but the marks are treated as punctuation rather than part of the surrounding words. In scientific and mathematical writing, parentheses help to group terms and to indicate arguments, indices, or intervals.

See also: Brackets, Braces, Digression.