Today’s article is about the placement of text and its accompanying punctuation in containers of various descriptions—parentheses, other-shaped brackets, and quotation marks.

The Pond

(The focus of this website is on Canadian English, with British and American English being discussed where relevant. Other varieties of English are out of scope.)

As with so many things in the English Language, what is considered correct depends upon which side of the Atlantic you are on (or are influenced by). And as with so many things that distinguish American English from the British variety, Canada’s the piggy in the middle on this issue.

Brackets of Various Shapes

Terminology

Differences in terminology do exist between the East and West Atlantic influences, but they’re minimal. Canada uses the American nomenclature.

Here is a summary for all four types of brackets. Where there is more than one name, the first is the preferred one.

	East of Atlantic	West of Atlantic
( )	Round bracket; Parenthesis*	Parenthesis*
[ ]	Square Bracket	Bracket; Square bracket
{ }	Brace; Curly bracket
< >	Angle bracket

*The plural is “parentheses”.

Square brackets are used mostly for inline explanation, correction or translation of quoted text. In the US, square brackets are used for nesting parenthetical material.

Curly brackets are chiefly only in limited and mostly specialized situations, such as mathematics, computer programming and music.

Angle brackets are used in markup languages such as HTML and XML, and some other programming languages such as PHP.

Nesting Pairs (of Brackets)

Here, it seems like someone’s deliberately trying to be different—the British and American conventions are direct opposites.

	East of Atlantic	West of Atlantic
Nested parentheses	(xxx (yyy) xxx) In some law reports and statutes, square brackets are used for the nested material.	(xxx [yyy] xxx) In situations such as bibliographic references in law publications, writers sometimes use (xxx (yyy) xxx)

Punctuation Placement

Fortunately, it appears that both the British and American influences pull in the same direction in this respect.

Periods, question marks, exclamation marks, and quotation marks are placed with the material that they relate to. This is much more easily illustrated with examples than described.

	Note
I guess we did good (and well)!	By choosing to put the exclamation mark outside the parentheses, the author is making the whole sentence an exclamation.
I guess we did good (and well!).	By choosing to put the exclamation mark inside the parentheses, the author is drawing attention to the distinction between doing good and doing well.
Mandy Rice-Davies’s riposte (Well, he would, wouldn’t he?) is often misquoted.	The riposte was phrased as a question, so the question mark belongs with the quote, inside the parentheses.
Do you remember Richard Nixon uttering what is perhaps his most famous quote (I am not a crook)?	The quote is a statement; the material surrounding it is a question. Therefore the question mark belongs outside the parentheses.
I just love the soundtrack from the Beatles’ second movie (Help!)!	This (contrived, but correct, I believe) example shows that a closing parenthesis can be preceded or followed (or in this case preceded and followed) by a terminating punctuation mark.

In American English, closing parentheses are never preceded by commas, colons or semi-colons.  New Hart’s Rules seems to be silent on the situation in British English. The Canadian Style states unequivocally, “Before a closing parenthesis only a period, question mark, exclamation mark or quotation mark is permitted.”

Quotation Marks

Quotation marks, also known in the U.K. as inverted commas, are the other kind of corral for textual material.

Once again, there are differences between the two principal flavours of English, and on this occasion, Canadian practice follows American. British English uses single quotes, resorting to double quotes for nesting, whereas American English does the opposite.

	East of Atlantic	West of Atlantic
Speech marks	‘This is speech.’	“This is speech.”
Quoted material	‘Quoted material’	“Quoted material”
Nested quotation/speech	‘And I quote, “Go away!”’	“And I quote, ‘Go away!’”
Punctuation placement	Inside marks if associated with original material, else outside. (But the rule is changing!)	Always inside the marks.

If you need to nest material to another level, revert to the outer mark used.

Do not use quotation marks for emphasis.

The situation regarding placement of punctuation is… interesting, and not necessarily in a good way. According to New Hart’s Rules, much modern British fiction and journalism is following the American practice, while according to The Chicago Manual of Style, many aspects of British practice are acceptable in the United States. Lesser mortals (such as I) can surely be forgiven for being at least a tad confused.

The Chicago Manual of Style contains almost a full page of index entries related to the use of quotation marks; that alone is a good indication that it’s not a straightforward topic. A short article like this cannot do justice to the full complexities, so if you’re keen to “get it right” I would strongly advise you to either consult the style guide for the flavour of English that you’re writing, or hire a writer to do it for you.

The Long and Short

There’s actually no way to comprehensively summarize this topic in a few sentences, but here is my attempt.

• If your organization has a house style guide, consult it and follow it. If not, continue below.
• Decide which variety of English you’re writing in.
• Determine which shape(s) of brackets you need to use.
• Use the examples above to determine where to place punctuation in relation to brackets and quotation marks.
• Consult the accepted style reference for your variety of English to sort out less-than-simple punctuation, or re-word to avoid the issue.
• If all else fails, hire a writer. (I am a writer—we can collaborate remotely.)

Please Help Improve Yonder Pedant’s Ramblings

• Did I miss a typo? (I’ll feel bad when you tell me, but I’d rather you did tell me!)
• Did I write something that makes you want to turn green and burst out of your shirt?
• Do you have any better examples that you would share and allow me to use?

If so, please let me know by leaving a comment.