Brackets and Full Stop Placement (with Examples)

by Craig Shrives

Brackets and Full Stop Placement

Does the full stop go inside or outside the closing bracket? This is a common question. Here is the quick answer:
If brackets contain a complete sentence, then the full stop for that sentence is placed inside the closing bracket.
Here is an example:
  • Lee loves cheese-and-onion pies and eats at least two a day. (On weekends, he routinely eats four.) However, he burns hundreds of calories cycling to work.
If the brackets offer additional information that is not a complete sentence, then the main sentence keeps its own full stop.
For example:
  • Lee loves cheese-and-onion pies and eats at least two a day (four at weekends). However, he burns hundreds of calories cycling to work.
  • Lee loves cheese-and-onion pies and eats at least two a day (four at weekends.) However, he burns hundreds of calories cycling to work.

End Punctuation with Brackets Follows Logic

The use of end punctuation with brackets follows logic. If the end punctuation belongs to the text inside the brackets, keep it inside. If it belongs to the text outside the brackets, leave it outside.
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See Also

More about round brackets Using square brackets Using apostrophes Using brackets parentheses Using colons Using commas Using dashes Using hyphens Using quotation marks Using semicolons