Not Tonight (I'm In Parentheses)
Today's Unsolicited, Nonjudgmental, No-Nerd-Speak Grammar Lesson: Punctuation and Parentheses It's simple: Whatever you put between parentheses, you should be able to remove and still have a complete sentence. That includes punctuation. The parenthetical matter itself need not be (although it can be) a complete sentence, if it is simply inserted into a sentence. (Standalone parenthetical matter, on the other hand, should be a complete sentence, with all appropriate punctuation contained within the parentheses.) So: * This is a sentence (including parenthetical matter), properly punctuated. * This is a sentence, properly punctuated. (And this is a standalone parenthetical sentence, also properly punctuated.) * This is a sentence with parenthetical matter at the end (also properly punctuated). It's often when we put parenthetical material at the end of a sentence that we grow uncertain: Um ... the ending punctuation belongs ... um ... inside the par...