So I was just reading the tvtropes page on Negative Continuity and came across the following sentence:
Hmm. Now, theoretically, you should be able to completely strike a parenthetical statement without rendering its sentence meaningless or otherwise broken, but that clearly isn’t the case here (“Maude Flanders are still dead”). On the other hand, replacing *are *with *is *in this case might be something you could get away with on the printed page, but it *sounds *gratingly awful.
Is there an accepted answer to this sort of dilemma? I come across it while writing from time to time, of course, and my usual strategy is simply to rewrite the sentence in a way that sidesteps the question. The simplest method would be: “Maude Flanders (in addition to other dead characters) is still dead,” but that construction often leaves something to be desired.
The parentheses is normally not a part of subject-verb agreement of the sentence. Thus, “Maude Flanders (and, to a lesser extent, other dead characters) is still dead.”
But it’s a bad sentence overall. How can people be dead to a lesser extent?* I’d say, "Dead characters on the Simpsons, including Maude Flanders and Francisco Franco, still remain dead.
Change the “and” to “as well as” or “along with.” Rephrase it to space “characters” from the verb to minimize the inclination to have the verb agree with the plural “characters.” Thus, “Maude Flanders (along with other dead characters to a lesser extent) is still dead.”