Lesson video

Hi, I'm Mr. Buckingham, and I'm really pleased to see you today for our lesson on parenthesis using brackets.

Now, it's not often we get to learn a completely new piece of punctuation to use in our writing, but I think you'll find that brackets are very helpful to us in adding extra information for our reader.

And I bet once you finish this lesson, you will start seeing them everywhere in things that you read.

So let's get started.

Today's lesson is called Parentheses and Brackets, from our unit called "Speech, Punctuation, Parenthesis, and Apostrophes." By the end of today's lesson, we're going to be able to use brackets to add extra factual information.

So our focus today is on non-fiction writing, where we might want to add facts into a sentence using brackets to add parenthesis.

So this is going to allow us to pack our sentences full of interesting factual information for our reader to make our writing even more interesting.

Let's get to it.

Here are keywords for today's lesson, my turn, your turn: parenthesis, brackets, and factual.

So parenthesis is additional information that's added to a sentence; and if it's removed, the sentence still makes sense.

Brackets are a punctuation mark that's used to add extra factual information in a clause.

And information is factual if it's true.

Let us look at our lesson outline.

We're going to start by looking at the purpose of parenthesis and then we'll go on to adding parenthesis using brackets.

Some things we read, as you know, are fiction and some are non-fiction.

Fiction writing is based on what the author imagines happening, even though it can include real places and real people, so it might be things like story books and novels and poems and graphic novels and picture books.

Non-fiction writing is based on reality and facts, things that are true, but it might also include the author's opinion at times as well.

So non-fiction text might include diaries and reference books, atlases, biographies, that's people's life stories, newspapers, and some websites.

Now, in non-fiction writing, we can find a mixture of factual information and opinions.

Here's an extract from a newspaper article: "The act of vandalism, which occurred on the 17th of September in Basildon Town Centre, caused thousands of pounds of damage.

The devious criminals who committed it must be brought to justice as soon as humanly possible!" So you probably spotted that this part is the factual information, this tells us what happened, and that this section is an opinion, it's what the author thinks about the crime.

So often in newspapers, we might see a mixture of factual information and opinions in this way, so we have to be able to spot those to know: "Is what's being said definitely true or is it what someone thinks, an opinion?" So which of the following are pieces of factual information? So I want you to look carefully at what's being said.

If it's an opinion, it might not be factual.

So I want you to look carefully for the ones which are definitely saying factual information.

Pause the video and have a think.

Okay, let's take a look.

A is not factual.

This is someone's opinion about the criminals.

B is factual.

This is something which just is a statement of fact.

It occurred at night, that's not someone's opinion, it's factual.

C is not factual.

This is saying someone's opinion about what we should do after the event.

D is factual, it's saying this could happen as a result of the crime that's taken place based on factual information.

Well done if you got those two.

Now, in non-fiction writing like this, we can add extra factual information using brackets.

And brackets are a piece of punctuation that always come as a pair, and you can see them here.

Here are some examples: "The Pacific Ocean, the largest on Earth, covers more than 60 million square miles." Look how I've added some information inside the brackets.

There's a bracket before and after that information, "The largest on Earth." Here's another example: "Mary Seacole, a famous nurse, was born in Jamaica in 1805." "World War II, 1939 to 1945, was fought between the Allies and the Axis Powers." "The criminals, aged 23 and 24, have been imprisoned for 12 years." So in each case, I've added some extra factual information inside some brackets.

Now, the extra factual information inside the brackets is a type of parenthesis.

And parenthesis is just extra details added inside of a sentence, and we can add them using bracket like we've just seen.

In this case, the parenthesis comes directly after the noun or the noun phrase that it's giving us the extra information about.

Lemme show you.

Here's our sentence.

We've got our noun or noun phrase.

The Pacific Ocean, that's a noun phrase, it's more than one word.

And then here, inside the brackets, we have the parenthesis, the extra information, the largest on Earth, and it's come directly after that noun phrase.

Here we have the noun phrase, Mary Seacole, it's a name.

And then here we have the parenthesis, a famous nurse, inside brackets after that noun phrase.

So the bracket show us where the parenthesis is, the extra information, and in this case, they're coming directly after the noun phrase.

So can you find the parenthesis in each sentence and the noun or the noun phrase it gives us more factual information about? Pause the video and have a try.

Well, it's a good effort.

In A, we can see this is the parenthesis, the extra information, and this is the noun phrase, Winston Churchill.

In B, the parenthesis is then a British colony and the noun phrase is Jamaica.

Notice how it comes directly after that word Jamaica.

Then a British colony is not about Mary Seacole, so it's not come after that noun phrase, it's come after Jamaica 'cause that's what it refers to.

And in C, this is the parenthesis, aged 45, inside the brackets, and it comes after the noun Jeff Britain, which is a name.

Really well done if you spotted those.

So in this lesson, we're going to use a phrase and not a clause to create the factual information in the parenthesis.

Now I'm sure you remember the difference between a phrase and a clause, but let's just quickly recap.

A clause is a group of words that contains a verb and a phrase is a group of words that has no verb.

So we're going to use phrases inside our brackets as parenthesis in this lesson.

So: "The criminals, aged 23 and 24, have been imprisoned for 12 years." The parenthesis inside the brackets is aged 23 and 24.

That has no verb, so it's a phrase, and that's how we're going to use it in this lesson.

And sometimes the parenthesis might just be a group of numbers, like in this example, 1939 to 1945.

There are no words at all, and that's okay when we're adding factual information as parenthesis inside brackets as we are doing in this lesson.

Now, here's the really important bit.

If we remove the parenthesis, the sentence would still make complete sense.

So here are our sentences we've already seen.

If I remove this piece of parenthesis, the sentence says, "The Pacific Ocean covers more than 60 million square miles." That's a complete sentence and it makes sense.

This one would be: "Mary Seacole was Born in Jamaica in 1805," so that makes sense.

If I remove this parenthesis, this sentence makes sense; and here the same is true.

So if we can remove the parenthesis and the sentence makes complete sense, then we've used the parenthesis correctly.

And the reason for that is that the parenthesis is extra information, it's not essential to the sentence.

All of these are still interesting sentences.

The parenthesis inside the brackets is extra information that adds even more interesting details for our reader; it's extra.

So try reading these sentences with the parenthesis inside the brackets removed, they should still make complete sense.

Try out.

Pause the video and have a go.

Okay, let's try it together.

A would say, "World War I led to the deaths of around 40 million people." B would say, 'Mount Etna is the tallest peak in Southern Italy." And C would say, "Albert Einstein was born in Ulm in 1879." All of those still make complete sense without the parenthesis.

That shows us that the parenthesis was extra information that's not essential, and that shows as we've used the parenthesis correctly.

So if we remove the parenthesis and the sentence no longer makes sense, then the parenthesis was not written correctly.

Let me show you a bad example: "The Atlantic Ocean, is the second largest in the world, with an area of 32 million square miles." Now, if I remove that parenthesis, the sentence says this: "The Atlantic Ocean with an area of 32 million square miles." Now, that does not make sense, so that parenthesis was not used correctly.

It should have looked like this: "The Atlantic Ocean, the second largest in the world, has an area of 32 million square miles." Now if I remove the parenthesis, the sentence says, "The Atlantic Ocean has an area of 32 million square miles." That makes sense, so my parenthesis was used correctly.

So remember that parenthesis is extra detail.

It's helpful, it's interesting, but it is not essential, so it has to be able to be removed.

So which sentences here have the parenthesis written correctly? Test it out by trying to remove it.

If you remove it and the sentence doesn't make sense, the parenthesis wasn't written correctly.

So which ones have the parenthesis written correctly? Pause the video and work it out.

Okay, let's test these out.

A would say, "The Mariana Trench is the deepest place on Earth." That works.

B would say, "Mount Everest and is in the Himalayas." No, that doesn't work.

C would say, "Malta is one of Europe's smallest countries." That one does work.

So if we can remove the parenthesis and the sentence still makes sense, we've done it right.

Well done.

Now, if the sentence contains parenthesis, we can identify where to put those brackets by deciding which part of the sentence is extra information.

So here's a sentence which does contain some parenthesis, some extra information, but it hasn't yet been placed inside the brackets.

So let's find out which part of the sentence is extra and which part could make sense on its own.

So this part is the main clause, it would make complete sense on its own: "The Vatican City is the world's smallest country." This could be removed, it's extra: "With only 800 people." So that's the bit we're going to put in the brackets, that's the parenthesis: "The Vatican city, with only 800 people, is the world's smallest country." We could remove it and the sentence would still work.

So if we can identify the part of the sentence that would be a complete sentence on its own, we can find the parenthesis.

Here's another example: "George Washington 1732 to 1799 was the first president of the USA." Well, this section, these two parts together are the main clause.

They would make sense on their own, it would say, "George Washington was the first president of the USA." So this part could be removed; it's extra information.

So that's the part we're going to put inside the bracket, that is the parenthesis.

'Cause remember, parenthesis is extra information that could be removed.

So now it says, "George Washington, 1732 to 1799, was the first president of the USA," with the brackets around the part we could remove.

So where should the parenthesis be shown using brackets in these sentences? Try and work out which part could be removed and the sentence would still make sense and put that part inside the brackets.

Pause the video and have a try.

Okay, let's take a look.

For A, we would do this: "Leads, a city in West Yorkshire," because the rest of the sentence would be, "Leeds is home to over 500,000 people." For B, inside the brackets we'd have the parenthesis at 978 metres because the rest of the sentence would read, "Scaffold Pike is England's tallest mountain," which makes sense.

And C, we'd put this part inside the brackets.

The parenthesis is a river in western England because the rest of the sentence could read, "The Seven is the UK's longest river," which makes sense.

Really good job if you've got those brackets around the parenthesis, which could be removed.

Now let's do our task for the first part of our lesson.

I'm going to show you some sentences which contain parenthesis, extra information, but the brackets have not been added around it.

So I'd like you to add a pair of brackets in each sentence to show the parenthesis.

Here are your sentences.

Pause the video and have a go.

Okay, let's take a look I'm going to show you the sentences now with the brackets added in around that parenthesis.

In A, the parenthesis is 849 to 899; in B, it's at 1,345 metres; in C, it's a pioneer of nursing; in D, it's the leader of the government; in E, it's a city in the northwest of England; and in F, it's the largest island in the world.

Notice how none of those pieces of parenthesis contains a verb.

They're all phrases, they're all pieces of factual information, and they could all be removed and the sentence, it would still make sense.

Fantastic job if you've got these right.

Okay, we've learned about the purpose of parenthesis.

So now let's move on to adding parenthesis ourselves using bracket in a sentence.

Now, when we decide to add parenthesis into a sentence, we must decide where to place it.

And we've already said that we can add parenthesis with brackets after a noun or a noun phrase to give extra factual information about it.

So here's a sentence: "Queen Victoria was married to Prince Albert." Now, we can see a noun phrase here, Queen Victoria, so we could add some parenthesis there.

We could say, "Queen Victoria, 1819 to 1901," that's the length of her life, "was married to Prince Albert." But we've also got a noun phrase here, Prince Albert, so we could add parenthesis after there using brackets.

We could say, "Queen Victoria was married to Prince Albert, a German." So we've got two noun phrases and two places we could add parenthesis.

We could do both.

We could say, "Queen Victoria, 1819 to 1901, was married to Prince Albert, a German." We've used two sets of bracket to add two pieces of parentheses after a noun phrase in both places.

So as we've just seen, there might be several nouns in the sentence after which parenthesis in brackets could be added, but some will work better than others.

Let me show you an example.

Here's a sentence with three nouns we could use: "Snowden is the highest mountain in Wales." So we could place parenthesis after Snowden to give more details about Snowden; that works really well.

We could say, "Snowden, Yr Wyddfa in Welsh, is the highest mountain in Wales." We could say, "Snowden, at 1,084 metres," is the highest mountain in Wales," or, "Snowden, in Snowdonia National Park, is the highest mountain in Wales." Those all work as a way of giving extra factual information about the noun Snowden.

We could place parenthesis after the mountain, but that doesn't actually work very well.

And if you pause for a second and think about it, you'll see that it's very difficult to think of any parenthesis that could work there.

But we do have this noun, Wales, and that one will work.

Here's an example.

We could say, "Snowden is the highest mountain in Wales, a country in the United Kingdom." So we have to think carefully about whether we have something to say about a noun; and then if we do, we place the parenthesis directly after it in our brackets.

So where could parenthesis be added in this sentence: "London has many tourist attractions"? And you might want to think what parenthesis you could add as well.

Pause the video and have a think.

Okay, let's take a look.

We have two nouns and noun phrases here.

We have London and we have tourist attractions, that's a noun phrase.

So here are some ideas I thought of for what we could say.

We could say, "London, a city in England, has many tourist attractions." We could say, "London, a city of 9 million people." We could say, "London, the capital of the UK." Or if we use tourist attractions, our parenthesis is going to shift to the end of the sentence, and it could say, "London has many tourist attractions, including the Houses of Parliament," or, "London has many tourist attractions, like the River Thames." So notice how the piece of parenthesis inside the brackets goes after the noun or the noun phrase that it's telling us more extra information about.

Really well done.

Now, remember, we're adding phrases, not clauses to create our parenthesis in these brackets today.

So all of these are phrases: a city in England, a German, the largest on Earth.

There are no verbs in any of these, which means they're phrases and not clauses.

But the sentence itself must contain a verb, it's just not inside the parenthesis.

So we can see the verb has, the verb is, the verbs were married or was married, and the verb covers.

All of those are verbs, but none of those verbs are inside the brackets because we've added phrases today for that extra factual information.

Now, a clever way of making parenthesis is to combine information from two sentences into one by using parenthesis inside brackets.

So here's a sentence about Elizabeth I: "Elizabeth I became queen of England at the age of 25." Here's another sentence about her: "She lived from 1558 to 1603." We can combine those into one sentence using parenthesis inside brackets.

We could say, "Elizabeth I, 1558 to 1603, became Queen of England at the age of 25." And I know if I removed those brackets, the sentence would still make sense; I've combined two sentences.

Here's another example, the same first sentence, and here's another sentence: "She was a very powerful leader." Now, there I can see a verb was, so I want to put that inside my brackets as parenthesis.

I need to remove that verb.

I could do it like this: "Elizabeth I, a very powerful leader, became Queen of England at the age of 25." It's now a phrase because I've removed that verb was and it's directly after the noun it refers to, Elizabeth I, and it's added some extra information.

So which version below combines these two sentences correctly? I've got the same first sentence and then a second one: "She was the second daughter of Henry VIII." Pause the video and see if you can work out which sentence combines those two correctly.

Have a go.

Okay, let's take a look.

We can see that A is not correct.

We've got a verb was inside the brackets there, so that's not going to work for us today.

B is not correct either because if we remove that parenthesis, the sentence would say, "Elizabeth I at the age of 25," which is not a sentence.

That one hasn't worked.

C is correct.

Here we've got a phrase with no verb: "The second daughter of Henry VIII," and if we removed it, the sentence would still make sense.

Really good job if you got that one.

Now, so far we've mostly added parenthesis using in simple sentences, but we can also use parenthesis in complex sentences.

And remember, a complex sentence is made of a main clause and a subordinate clause.

Here's a complex sentence: "As the Titanic crossed the Atlantic, it's entered an area full of icebergs." The subordinate clause here is an adverbial clause, "As the Titanic crossed the Atlantic," starting with that subordinating conjunction as, and the main clause is, "It entered an area full of icebergs." Now, we need to look for a noun or a noun phrase we want to say more about.

We could say more about the Atlantic.

I could say, "As the Titanic crossed the Atlantic, the world's second largest ocean, it entered an area full of icebergs." So we have a complex sentence where we've taken a noun or a noun phrase and we've added parenthesis in brackets after it to give more detail about that noun or noun phrase.

Here's another example.

Here's the complex sentence: "Titanic sank after it struck a huge iceberg." Here, the main clause is first, "Titanic sank," and the adverbial clause is, "After it struck a huge iceberg." So here we're looking for another noun or noun phrase to add parenthesis about; we could use Titanic.

We could say, "Titanic, a 270 meter-long ship," or "Titanic, a British ship." Both of those are phrases with no verb inside our brackets, they could be removed and the sentence would still make sense.

Okay, I've got a simple sentence here: "The Olympic Games were held in the UK in 2012." And I've got a list of possible parenthesis we could add in: a major sports event, a country in northern Europe, and a leap year.

I'd like you to pause the video and see if you can add in those as parenthesis using brackets in different places in this sentence.

You might be able to create as many as three different sentences, each with a different piece of parenthesis.

Pause the video and have a try.

Okay, let me show you how I did it.

I did, "The Olympic Games, a major sports event, were held in the UK in 2012." I could do, "The Olympic games were held in the UK, a country in northern Europe, in 2012." Or I could say, "The Olympic Games were held in the UK in 2012, a leap year." Notice how I've placed them after the noun or the noun phrase that they refer to; it has to be directly after in this occasion.

Really well done if you've got those in the right place with the brackets around them.

Now let's try another one.

Can you match each sentence to the correct piece of factual information to create a sentence that includes parenthesis using brackets? So see if you can create a sentence using one of the simple sentences on the left and adding in one of the pieces of parenthesis on the right.

Pause the video and have a try.

Okay, let's take a look.

For A, we would say, "Bristol, a city of 500,000 people, is home to two football teams." For B, we could say, "The victim of the crime, 24-year-old Max Rees, was furious." And for C: "William Shakespeare, the well-known writer, was born in 1564." And you'll know you've put it in the right place because it comes directly after the noun or noun phrase.

Now in B, you can see that noun phrase is pretty long.

The victim of the crime is a long noun phrase, but that is the noun phrase we would put that parenthesis after because that's who it's telling us more about: the victim of the crime.

Really well done if you got those in the right spot.

Okay, let's try our final task for this lesson.

Here are some sentences and here are some extra factual information.

I'd like you to match up the sentences with the extra factual information that is most relevant to them, then I want you to put that factual information as parenthesis inside the sentences using brackets, remembering it should go after the noun or noun phrase that it tells us extra information about.

So pause the video and let's combine these ideas to make four new sentences each containing parenthesis using brackets.

Have a go.

Okay, here are the sentences that you should have written.

We would have, "Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, was the mother of Elizabeth I." For B: "When London, a major target for the Nazis, was bombed during World War II, children were sent to the countryside." "Birmingham, with a population of over 1 million people, is England's second largest city." And finally, "Ben Nevis is located in Scotland, a country with its capital in Edinburgh, but it is the highest mountain in the whole UK." So notice how each of these pieces of parenthesis goes after the noun phrase it refers to: to Anne Boleyn, to London, to Birmingham, and to Scotland.

Really well done if you got these in the right place with the brackets around the right words.

Great job.

Okay, let's summarise our learning in this lesson.

We learned that parenthesis is additional information that's been added to a sentence; if it's removed, the sentence still makes sense.

We've learned that we can use brackets to add parenthesis in a non-fiction piece of writing.

And the parenthesis includes additional factual information about a noun or a noun phrase in the sentence.

And the brackets are placed either side of the extra information in the sentence.

I hope you found this really useful and that you'll be able to go away now and see if you can spot some brackets being used in texts that you read, but also hopefully use them to add some extra information of your own in your non-fiction writing.