Let's talk about the main uses of square
brackets, which are, of course, not to be
confused with parentheses. So one of the
main uses is to add some extra
information to a quotation, and we
usually do that for clarification
purposes. So if you look at this example
here, the word "it" is a little bit vague,
and we've added some extra information
in square brackets just to clarify it.
The truth is, though, that often you can
do without the square brackets
just by rejigging the quotation a little
bit. So what you could do in this case is
start just a little bit later in the
quotation. If you get rid of "it" here, and
the square brackets, and the quotation
marks, get rid of this final square
bracket as well, and then just start your
quotation after this explanation. So now
it would read, "as Robert Ballard recounts,
the final resting place of the Titanic
'is,'" and so on. The main lesson, then, that
we learned from this is that, wherever
possible, try to avoid using square
brackets because they tend to interrupt
the flow, and often you can do very
easily without them.
However, at other times, it may be
necessary to use them after all. So if you
look at this example, the original
passage uses the word "kiore," which is
a Maori term, so the Mary are the native
peoples of New Zealand, and most people
might not be familiar with this word. And
that's why we've indicated what this
refers to in square brackets. And because
it's really in the middle of the quote,
and we want the whole quotation, it's
pretty much inevitable that we need to
use the square brackets here. If you take
a closer look at this quotation, by the
way, you also see the very nice use here
of semicolons in a list with internal
punctuation. So if you've reviewed the
lesson on semicolons, then you might look
at this example and see how nicely they
are being used here. The second use of
square brackets helps us to integrate
quotations. And you can see that in the
example here, that in the original, this
was likely a lowercase H, but we've changed
it to an uppercase H because, in this
case, we want to quote
a complete sentence. Often though, you can do
without square brackets simply by
changing your introductory phrase or
clause. And we've done that here by
making sure that our phrasing works very
nicely with what follows, that the syntax
works together. And together these two
parts form one sentence. In that case we
don't need to change anything here. If
this was originally a lowercase T,
then we can simply leave it as it is. So
a square bracket then, or a set of square
brackets, helps us to adjust quotations
at times so that we can fit them within
the context or the syntax of our own
sentences.
Let's look very quickly at two more uses
of square brackets.
The first one is with this little Latin
word "sic," which means (doesn't mean that
something is sick)
it means "thus" or "so." And it's used in
English to point out a mistake in the
original passage. In this case, the
mistake is that the ! should have been
an L. And the thing is that you can use
"sic" to point that out, just to show that
it's not your mistake, but be careful
that you don't use "sic" too much in your
writing. If you're seeing mistakes
everywhere,
that's great. It means you're a very
discerning reader. But if you use "sic"
all the time, then people might say "well
this this person is very, a bit of
a show-off, a bit condescending." And so you
may want to think twice about whether
"sic" is always useful or necessary. Often
what you can do is quote a different
passage, or paraphrase, or work around the
original mistake so that you don't
necessarily need to draw attention to it.
The last major use of square brackets is
within parentheses. So let's say you have
parentheses within parentheses, then what
you can do is turn these middle
parentheses into square brackets just to
differentiate them. And you can see that
we've done that here with "the highest
mountain in Europe," and we've added some
extra information within that. But as you
can see from this example (it's a bit of
a silly one actually), but you can see
that often it's very easy just to
rewrite the sentence,
change the syntax, and then you
can do without square brackets in the
first place. So square brackets then, just
to summarize, are very useful for adding
extra information, for making some
changes, for pointing out errors,
for showing that parentheses within
parentheses are set off properly, but
very often you don't really need them.
They tend to interrupt the flow of your
writing, and if you want to write more
naturally and smoothly, then often you
can do without them.