• @[email protected]
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    418 hours ago

    This is false (but sometimes true [unless it isn’t– and that’s possible (sometimes)])

  • Gormadt
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    161 day ago

    Jokes on you I nest those things too (sometimes sentances need some extra extra (like this one))

    • @[email protected]
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      216 hours ago

      My issue is that I really dislike nested brackets in text. They are fine in math but only with appropriate \left, \right, \bigl, \bigr, …

  • ddh
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    231 day ago

    Adding and removing parenthetical clauses from my email until they all suddenly resolve, collapsing to nothing and I am left with an empty email. “Brilliant!” I think, and close Outlook, having solved my own problem.

  • quarrk [he/him]
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    21 hours ago

    There’s always an equivalent way using a more advanced sentence structure. Parentheses are just the lazy way / bad habit.

    Example:

    • I went to the store this afternoon (I was out of milk) and I ran into an old friend.
    • I went to the store this afternoon because I was out of milk. There, I ran into an old friend.
  • @[email protected]
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    151 day ago

    Parenthesis is singular, parentheses is plural. One parenthesis, two parentheses. Like crisis/crises, axis/axes.

      • KubeRoot
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        41 day ago

        They sure do, unless you missed a parenthesis and somebody wants to point that out ;)

      • @[email protected]
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        1 day ago

        You might want to refer to the left parenthesis or the right parenthesis and then it would be incorrect to use the plural.

  • AnimalsDream
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    1 day ago

    ADHD person here. Been making an effort lately to use less parenthesis. A thing I quickly found is that many of them can be replaced with a comma just fine. Or, just like, taking the extra two seconds to turn one run-on sentence into two. (But then again turning my comments into puzzles is fun).

    • @[email protected]
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      118 hours ago

      Texts can still be long-winded without parentheses. The trick is to consider which information the other person needs in this moment. It’s definitely a skill worth developing.

      That said, sometimes I still info dump just because I love it. And there are people who appreciate me for it, too.

    • @[email protected]
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      81 day ago

      Half the time I realize the parenthesis works better as a separate sentence, preceding the original sentence, because I’d gone “Thought (context).” instead of “Context; thought.”

      But then I start writing “thought (context1; small tangent; context2 (sub-context)). Follow-up thought (…” and it’s a damn Chinese puzzle trying to put back flat and in the right-order.

    • d-RLY?
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      61 day ago

      I am always getting to the end of comments or really anything I write to someone (especially if more than a few sentences). Then get frustrated to see that I just ended up inserting basically a paragraph’s worth of shit inside one sentence. I have like a really hard time making simple and condensed information (or other times the complete opposite and say waaaay too little).

      It is like a really strong need to try an provide all the information that could lead to being taken the wrong way. Or to convey that I considered obvious arguments to save people from bringing them up needlessly. And I think that using parenthesis looks less “bad” than the super long run-on sentences. I am the worst person in my friend-groups if someone wants a TL;DR of things fast.

      • @[email protected]
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        81 day ago

        Scientist: Scientific findings are meaningless when taken out of context.

        Journalist: Scientist says scientific findings are meaningless!

      • AnimalsDream
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        101 day ago

        “I am heartbroken.”

        Omg what happened, why are you heartbroken?

    • Owl
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      41 day ago

      Discovered the same thing about a year ago, it works amazingly well !

      • @[email protected]
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        51 day ago

        Of course, it often then becomes a comma splice; in that case, a period or semicolon works (but I use comma splices constantly anyway).

        • Owl
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          31 day ago

          Puffed while reading your comment 😆

  • @[email protected]
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    2 days ago

    Primary thought (secondary supporting thought [tertiary supporting thought {fucking quaternary supporting thought, we have long since forgotten the primary thought}])

    • KittenBiscuits
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      192 days ago

      DAE start their parenthetical thought and end up writing full and multiple sentences inside it before returning to the original point?

      I try to catch myself and just make a new paragraph when that happens but I’m not always successful.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 days ago

        Guilty, but now I’m considering switching to footnotes¹. They let you express a related thought without disrupting the flow².

        ¹I blame House of Leaves. Lotta footnotes in there, and they can go a long way before they really get out of hand.

        ² Sure there are cons, like the fact that the reader has to go to the bottom for context, but there’s also no real length limit.

        • TensileSpark
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          21 day ago

          I love the way house of leaves does footnotes, it’s basically an entire other book crammed into the same space. I still haven’t finished it because I keep getting lost…

          • @[email protected]
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            21 day ago

            I’m stuck at chapter IX, where flipping forward a bit I know I’m going to have to dedicate a serious reading session to, and I just cannot find the time.

      • d-RLY?
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        21 day ago

        All day, every day. Sometimes I will just delete everything and just not reply at all. Which sucks when I actually want to make use of comments and engage in the communities more. So far all the folks on here and the other instances I am on tend to not turn the focus onto my excessive use of parenthesis, and stay on the topic.

        I am sure there have been some random one-offs. The only ones I can think of have been more about how I didn’t break things into paragraphs vs just one huge wall. Even then, it is obvious that they at least read most of it. And I try to take those the same as telling me I have something on my face vs not. Just depends on how they say it.

      • @[email protected]
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        82 days ago

        yes, but as far as I’m aware I don’t necessarily have ADHD? I do have autism, and there’s the suspicion I have ADHD, but I don’t have a paradoxical reaction to caffeine and also I’ve not been tested so who the fuck knows anything. My psychiatrist certainly doesn’t think testing is necessary.

    • MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown
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      12 days ago

      Primary thought; secondary (interjectory thought [aside]) thought, supporting thought that wouldn’t work as an independent sentence, digression: the actual point.

  • @[email protected]
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    362 days ago

    Since one email with {[()]} in it,I really force myself to cut back on that… Now it takes me three times as long to type a bloody answer to anything …

    • ...m...
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      492 days ago

      …i apologise for the long letter; i didn’t have time to write a shorter one…

    • Evil_Shrubbery
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      2 days ago

      Lol, I did that too!

      But people bitched abut it & about me being weird so now I just ((())) if it’s really needed (or if my brainhole just can’t/refuses to rephrase the text … or I ran out of fucks).

    • @[email protected]
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      32 days ago

      I send my work emails to my boss to proof read cause I can’t be trusted to be succinct and relevant (not that they force me to, I just overthink).

  • @[email protected]
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    61 day ago

    You know i like to think I have it under control. No outbursts control over irritants etc and I think in doing pretty good. Then someone posts some shit like this and I’m all “get out of my head” . Nice to know I’m not the only one giving the brackets a work out.

    • @[email protected]
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      112 days ago

      Learning push/pop in the context of a stack provided me with a lifelong justification for being what others call “flighty”. This is super evident while doing chores and I jump from washing dishes to wiping counters to washing floors to putting laundry in the washer. To someone at that point it looks like I’ve started a bunch of things that I didn’t finish.

      In fact, I paused on the dishes so I could clear a spot on the counter for them, realized I swept a bunch of crumbs on the floor that I needed to clean up, but before I could finish the floor I had to do something with that dirty pile of laundry that was in the way. Keep watching and you’d see me “pop” each of those tasks back off the stack in turn, eventually getting back to the dishes where I started.

      • @[email protected]
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        31 day ago

        I like this take on it. I’ve just been calling it my “if you give a mouse a cookie” mode

    • moseschrute
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      92 days ago

      Is it fair to say people with ADHD add thoughts onto a stack while the rest of the population adds thoughts to a queue?

        • KittenBiscuits
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          52 days ago

          You pop one off the stack but in doing so it opens up and a dozen springy toy snake thoughts burst out.

          • moseschrute
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            32 days ago

            Yeah. So you pop one off the stack, but in processing that item, you push 10 more things on the stack. And the same happens when you pop one of those 10 items off the stack.

                • ddh
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                  31 day ago

                  Why haven’t I finished that task from eight weeks ago? I can’t tell you, or it will get even later.

      • Nougat
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        42 days ago

        I suspect it’s non-ADHD is linear, while ADHD is multi-dimensional mesh.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 days ago

        The thoughts are added to the ether and the ones that happen to make contact with the previous node become the next link.