F' parentheses

Most parentheses annoy me. Too often they interrupt the grammatical flow of a sentence. Too often they hide digressions that would be better left unsaid. Too often they're used as stream-of-consciousness crutches, as though they give the author a pass from having to clarify thoughts before putting them into words. And too often parentheses are just plain ugly.

But my biggest problem with the parenthetical is something else. Too often—and once is more than enough—parentheses are used for evasion. They're accomplices to an author whose crimes are obfuscation and bullying the reader. The parenthetical is passed off as a casual aside but is instead the author's main point or tenuous assumption—as though punctuation can shield a bad argument. Maybe this kind of disingenuousness fools some readers, but it makes me want to disagree with everything the author says, if only on principle.

Take the following, an example of parenthetical slyness:

Since we cannot get inside the mind of another creature—or another human being for that matter—we can never be sure whether that creature is self-aware. (Observations of the way chimpanzees behave in front of mirrors do not demonstrate self-awareness, despite claims to the contrary.)

It may very well be that chimpanzees' behavior in front of mirrors doesn't demonstrate self-awareness, but that's not obvious to me. Has that assertion been backed up elsewhere? I don't know, and the author doesn't alert me to the evidence. Rather, I'm supposed to take it on faith.

Reread the passage and imagine it without the parentheses. The last sentence hangs in the air, speculative and meaningless. I wrote sentences like that for college papers when I procrastinated too much or was otherwise too lazy to find sources or explain myself. If colleges had teeth they would flunk students like me—or at least make me go rewrite the paper. But somehow when bald speculation is cloaked in parentheses it's good enough for publication; and we're supposed to accept it as fact. (This is nonsense.)

Here's an example of parenthetical browbeating, taken from a comment here at JEC about metaphysics:

We know that cataracts are privations because we know the purpose of the eye. The eye enables us to see, therefore its function is to enable human beings to see (note how this is a basic, evident truth, without need of argumentation. We're able to discern the function of things the same way we are able to know that there is an external world, or that change exists; i.e. Through direct, more-or-less immediate observation).

When I encounter a parenthetical like this, it occurs to me that all the words outside the parentheses are throwaway; it's the stuff inside the parentheses that marks what the author is really trying to say. And what the author says here is: I forbid you to disagree with me. But it's unacceptable to openly browbeat, so instead that message is shoved into a pair of parentheses, where it masquerades as a casual, offhand observation. The result is awkward, like those group conversations where someone disagrees with you but doesn't outright say so. Instead, that person lowers their voice and expresses their disagreement to the person sitting next to them, sure that everyone can hear them anyway. It's not bullying if you don't say it to someone's face, right?

Here's an example of parenthetical diversion, taken from an essay about starting an open source software project:

I started making designs ... and sent them around. Nothing happened. I tried to get people involved, but collaboratively working on a design is very hard (besides, it is probably not the best way to create software in the first place).

This is a case where parentheses are used in lieu of the author taking the more responsible action of using the backspace key. The author makes a valid point based on firsthand experience—that collaborative design is hard—but can't resist tossing in another, unsubstantiated claim: that collaborative design is bad. This extra claim doesn't add anything to the author's point, but otherwise this example is like parenthetical slyness in that the reader is expected to accept a claim without reason.

Parentheses have their place, and they are useful from time to time for clarification. But parentheses should be exceptional, and they should never express new ideas.