I have read the few questions about punctuations in parenthesis, but I think none of them answers my question. I've looked at:
- Where does the question mark go — inside or outside the parentheses?
- In which cases is a comma/period placed inside or outside of parentheses?
- Continuing a sentence in a parenthesis and then starting a new one inside the same
If I have the following sentence structure (modified from one of the earlier question), is the following punctuation correct? Should I put the period within the parenthesis since it is a full sentence, or don't put it because it is still going on with the main sentence?
This morning I was distracted by a plane (or was it Superman? I'm not very sure.), so I tripped.
Best Answer
I would punctuate around parentheses the same way as dashes.
With dashes, the sentence would look like this:
Therefore, with parentheses it would be:
That said, I prefer dashes here, because the middle phrase clearly relates to the topic of the sentence. Parentheses are better reserved for signaling a stronger digression from the main topic, e.g. —