They can be half round ( ) or square [ ] or curly { }
The intention of the bracket is to include additional information in the writing, but the piece of writing should stand alone and be correct and complete without the added information.
For example. I went to an exhibition (by Henry Maas) on Sunday at the Collingwood Gallery.
The above sentence was written by me. If the editor of this blog had added the parentheses he (or she) would have used square brackets indicating it was inserted by someone other than the writer.
So it would be:
I went to an exhibition [by Henry Maas] on Sunday at the Collingwood Gallery.
They can be used together (if you want to include an aside [or even some detail like a date] or superfluous information) if required.
They can definitely be overused. Here is an example:
According to the executive, "[The infinitite number of monkeys] are [creating an infinite number of blogs] each of which contain an infinite number of blogs, each of which contains [a randomly created] review, so that [the Google search engine] is fooled into thinking that it continually ['sees'] new blogs that reference [a given feature film] ." This way, those who have activated 'Google Alerts' for a specific film are sent multiple results multiple times each day, all of which lead to the same [illegal] download site. [1]
The multitude of brackets is distracting from the meaning of the text.
Rewritten without the brackets it looks like this:
According to the executive, are each of which contains review, so that is fooled into thinking that it continually new blogs that reference. This way those who have activated Google Alerts for a specific film are sent multiple results multiple times each day, all of which lead to the same download site.
The writers error here is that deleting what is within the brackets renderers the paragraph useless. At the same time, it at least is more attractive to the eye.
Curly brackets { } are not often used, but are sometimes used to denote a series of equal choices.
For example. Select your animal {Goat, Sheep, cow, pig}...
Curly brackets are most often used in mathematics. For example:
![\{f,g\} = \sum_{i=1}^{N} \left[
\frac{\partial f}{\partial q_{i}} \frac{\partial g}{\partial p_{i}} -
\frac{\partial f}{\partial p_{i}} \frac{\partial g}{\partial q_{i}}
\right]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/3/5/8/358755f883bc538bf1b85d0f02f96b0e.png)
Please don't ask me what it means. [2]
There are other brackets. In computing < and > are common.
So to summarise:
Don't overuse brackets. They make a sentence look messy and they can be unattractive.
When you write a sentence that includes brackets, make sure it stands alone without the brackets.
Use round brackets ( ) to add extra information.
Use square brackets [ ] to add extra information from an outside source.
Use curly brackets { } to indicate equal choice.
1. Isn't Life Terrible: Infinite Number of Monkeys at Typewriter Finally Give up on Hamlet: Now Working on Reviews Of Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" 4 Febuary 2009, viewed 5 October 2011
2. Bracket: Wikipedia the free Encyclopaedia, viewed 5 October 2011 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket>
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