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Parentheses (( )), also called round brackets, always occur in pairs. They have one major use and one or two minor uses.

Most commonly, a pair of parentheses is used to set off a strong or weak interruption, rather like a pair of dashes or a pair of bracketing commas. In the case of a strong interruption, very often it is possible to use either dashes or parentheses:

The destruction of Guernica ‹ and there is no doubt that the destruction was deliberate ‹ horrified the world. The destruction of Guernica (and there is no doubt that the destruction was deliberate) horrified the world. As a rule, however, we prefer parentheses, rather than dashes or bracketing commas, when the interruption is best regarded as a kind of “aside” from the writer to the reader: On the (rare!) occasion when you use a Latin abbreviation, be sure to punctuate it correctly. The battle of Jutland (as you may recall from your school days) put an end to Germany’s naval threat. The Basque language is not (as the old legend has it) exceedingly difficult to learn. We also use parentheses to set off an interruption which merely provides additional information or a brief explanation of an unfamiliar term: The number of living languages (currently about 6000, by most estimates) is decreasing rapidly. The bodegas (wine cellars) of the Rioja are an essential stop on any visit to northern Spain. The royal portraits of Velázquez (or Velásquez) are justly renowned. The German philosopher Gottlob Frege (1848­-1925) laid the foundations of formal logic and of semantics.