ADHD person here. Been making an effort lately to use less parenthesis. A thing I quickly found is that many of them can be replaced with a comma just fine. Or, just like, taking the extra two seconds to turn one run-on sentence into two. (But then again turning my comments into puzzles is fun).
Half the time I realize the parenthesis works better as a separate sentence, preceding the original sentence, because I’d gone “Thought (context).” instead of “Context; thought.”
But then I start writing “thought (context1; small tangent; context2 (sub-context)). Follow-up thought (…” and it’s a damn Chinese puzzle trying to put back flat and in the right-order.
ADHD person here. Been making an effort lately to use less parenthesis. A thing I quickly found is that many of them can be replaced with a comma just fine. Or, just like, taking the extra two seconds to turn one run-on sentence into two. (But then again turning my comments into puzzles is fun).
Half the time I realize the parenthesis works better as a separate sentence, preceding the original sentence, because I’d gone “Thought (context).” instead of “Context; thought.”
But then I start writing “thought (context1; small tangent; context2 (sub-context)). Follow-up thought (…” and it’s a damn Chinese puzzle trying to put back flat and in the right-order.
Discovered the same thing about a year ago, it works amazingly well !
Of course, it often then becomes a comma splice; in that case, a period or semicolon works (but I use comma splices constantly anyway).
Puffed while reading your comment 😆
That’s when someone just quotes one sentence out of context and I am heartbroken.
Scientist: Scientific findings are meaningless when taken out of context.
Journalist: Scientist says scientific findings are meaningless!