The Canadian Style
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- - Close Punctuation
- Introduction to Punctuation
- Spacing
- The Period, Main purpose
- Imperatives, exclamations and indirect questions
- Ellipsis points
- Leaders
- Other uses
- Periods properly omitted
- The Question Mark, Main purpose
- Requests, indirect questions and other uses
- The Exclamation Mark, Main purpose
- The Exclamation Mark, Miscellaneous
- The Comma, General
- Restrictive/non-restrictive
- The Comma, Co-ordinate elements
- Clarity and emphasis
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- Quotations, etc.
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- The Semicolon, Between independent clauses
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- Misuse and overuse
- The Colon, Between independent clauses
- Annunciatory function
- The Colon, Miscellaneous
- Misuse
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- Clarification
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- Square Brackets, General
- Use within parentheses
- Use
- Multiples
- The Em Dash, General
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7.36 Square Brackets, General
Square brackets, often simply called brackets, are more disconnective than parentheses. They are used to enclose material too extraneous for parentheses. Use brackets for editorial comments or additional information on material written by someone else. To use ordinary parentheses for this purpose would give the impression that the inserted words were those of the person quoted. Square brackets should also enclose translations given immediately after short quotations, terms and titles of books or articles. See 8.14 French and foreign-language quotations for detailed information and examples.
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