Is Parenthesis Singular? What about Parentheses?

In any language, there are marks used to indicate the tone that you’re speaking in and how you’re presenting your words. There’s question marks, commas, and much more. Parentheses are markers as well, but what’s the difference between parenthesis and parentheses?

Parentheses is the plural form of the word “parenthesis”, and they are the punctuation marks that show omitted information. These marks are used almost like a side note to whoever is reading. To put it simply, parentheses show side notes and information not essential to the sentence. Parenthesis is a single mark, while parentheses is the pair of them.

The rest of this article will cover what a parenthesis is, and what parentheses are.

What A Parenthesis Is

If you’ve ever seen this mark (, that is a parenthesis. The word parenthesis is very rare and not used often. It’s easier for everyone to simply call them “parentheses” since there’s always two of them. Regardless, parenthesis is still a word that can be used in sentences.

There’s nothing wrong with using “parenthesis”, but keep in mind that when using it, you have to be referring to a single mark rather than both of them. If you’re referring to both marks, then you have to say parentheses since that is the plural form of the word.

You can use parenthesis in a sentence like this: “Oh, I forgot to add the second parenthesis.” In this instance, the speaker of the sentence is expressing how they forgot a single parenthesis, which makes the sentence correct.

It wouldn’t make sense to say it like this: “Oh, I forgot to add the second parentheses.” It sounds awkward, doesn’t flow well, and makes the reader scratch their head while reading the sentence.

What Parentheses Are

Parentheses is the word you’ll see used to describe the () marks. Parenthesis is rare seeing as, normally, parentheses come in pairs. You can use this word in a variety of ways, and since it’s the more common spelling, you’re more likely to use parentheses than parenthesis.

Here are a few examples of how to use parentheses, as a word, in a sentence:

“I’m not sure if I should include this information or not, so I’ll just put it in parentheses.”

“Although Alina had interesting ideas, she used way too many parentheses on her report.”

“The only way he could describe what he was feeling was by putting it in parentheses.”