I posted something on another NG today, and found the need to explain an explanation, and it made me wonder if it’s good grammar to have a parantheses within a parentheses, and I figured y’all would know.
Thanks
Quasi
My style book (which has no cover anymore, because it’s many years old (it was my mom’s when she was a copy writer twenty years ago), so I don’t know the title) says it’s ok as long as you close all the sets of parentheses, but it should probably be avoided as much as possible just for clarity’s sake.
People often use square brackets inside round brackets for the sub-parenthesis, in a similar manner to the way one puts single quotes within double quotes.
I only use parentheses within parentheses if they are merely for a page-citation or date.
I did this just the other day on this message board. I think it’s allowed. I always learned that it was considered informal but permissible in things like personal letters. It makes sense if you consider the parenthesis like a comma (again, as I was taught). You can use as many commas as you like in a sentence; it just gets increasingly confusing.
Much like this post. Going now.
Like ndorward, I was always taught it was alright to use parentheses within parentheses as long as it’s not the same type (i.e. [meaning "for example], using square brackets). This helps distinguish the different thought. It’s kind of like using quotes within a quote. You’ve got " for the initial quote, and any quote done within that uses ’ to start and stop it. The only problem is, you just end up creating a long, possibly confusing as fuck, run on sentence.
Yeah, I use nested parentheses a lot. Just don’t forget to match each “(” with a “)”. OR “[” with a “]”. :eek:
“Information in parentheses is never necessary (however relevant)” claimed, IIRC, Kingsley Amis.
Amis’ view is a bit fundamentalist. However, each time I start to use parentheses, I ask myself if there’s an alternative. For example, I originally had “IIRC” above inside parentheses, but changed it to commas.
In writing, I try to avoid nested parentheses in most instances. Exceptions include citations, mathematical functions and the like.
Where I would otherwise use nested parentheses, I adopt other punctuation.
For a minor diversion, should you need to make one, you can set the parenthetical phrase off in commas.
If you want to introduce a more significant break – a bold diversion – you can set the parenthetical off in dashes.
Of course, it’s perfectly appropriate – and can even be considered gramatically elegant (though beware the everpresent discussion, often a brutal debate, over whether the dash should be surrounded by spaces) – to nest phrases set off by these different punctuation devices.
There’s nothing wrong with nested parentheses (if you want my opinion (and even if you don’t)) if (as has been previously observed) the author has the good sense to close each level (and not leave the sentence curiously hanging.
The parenthesis is my punctuation mark of choice (to be preferred above the tadpole-esque comma (how does one indicate the opening and closing of a clause? (a flaw shared with the stuttering, redundant, “long” dash (–).))
One should avoid opening a parenthetical comment in one paragraph, and closing it in another – that would be confusing.)
Our magazine style is:
• Brackets inside parentheses.
• Don’t do it, in any case—just rewrite the sentence, or use a footnote instead.
If your name is John Barth, not only do you telescope parentheses, but you handle quotes similarly. Like in Lost in the Funhouse, where one tale-teller quotes another, who quotes another, who has a parenthetical thought, etc.
Two consecutive lines read, and I quote:
I’d hate to have the proofreading job on that manuscript.
At bottom, what matters is how clear your writing is. Nested parentheses don’t help clarity. I’d prefer to avoid them whenever possible, using footnotes instead. But this is a question of style, not grammar, so there’s no “right” answer.
From It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The Final Confict:
“Heavens!” groaned fair Diana Rea (a groan uttered to the heights from her depths as she strained every muscle of her viscera (her bowel, her gut, her innermost being (that from which the great sages have mined their deepest wisdom (unlike middling ones, who only mine the mind (though Diana had quite a lucid mind in her lovely head (which sat on small, soft shoulders over which cascaded mounds of flaming red hair (if one may say mounds cascade (or that red hair flames, for that matter, though well it seemed to on Diana (who, though pretty, wasn’t shallow but contemplated life’s landscape in its heights and depths, lights and darks (like Kierkegaard, whom she was reading at the time (though nausea was the opposite of her problem))))))))))), “I do wish I could get over this constipation thing, but I must admit that the time I’ve spent on the pot reading has worked wonders for my knowledge of the humanities.”
—Greg Oehme, Grass Valley, CA
I use them all of the time when programming in Visual Basic:
result = this(that(i))
…and don’t even get me started on those LISP programmers…
Standard style for scientific journals (to avoid confusion in mathematical equations, for one thing) is:
**{ [ ( **{ [ ( ) ] } **) ] } **
Which doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong, just a style. 
I don’t think there’s a straight rule for this; it’s whatever the publisher, editor, and audience desire.