Rimmer notes that Bohr "scolded his distinguished colleague finally in Einstein's own terms 'God does not throw dice. Nor is it our business to prescribe to God how he should run the world.'"

One should avoid using quotation marks for emphasis.

3.10 Parentheses

Parentheses are used to enclose qualifying detail (cross-references, abbreviations, definitions, and other subsidiary information) that is of secondary importance to the main discussion. Parentheses should be used sparingly within sentences; commas often do the job better. Parentheses can also be used to enclose one or more entire sentences that add relevant but not essential detail to the main discussion:

The laser-alignment system uses small-diameter (approximately 0.25 in.), optical-quality mirrors embedded in the reflectors.

To make the piano's tone expressive, Brown files the crowns and shoulders (tops and sides) of each hammer to their proper shape if they are worn, fluffs up the hammer felt and, if necessary, brightens the tone by applying a lacquer solution under the crowns of the hammers.

The comparison between our data and models shows that for most of the Cascadia coast the locked zone is restricted to a swath 50 to 100 kilometers across that runs underneath the continental shelf. (It widens considerably only near the coast of northern Washington.)

3.11 Brackets

Brackets are used to set off an explanatory reference, your own comments, or corrections within material you are quoting:

According to Smith, "Proton energy levels [in the accelerator] are consistently higher than expected."

[These comments were made before Brodier became aware of Lightman's experiments.]

The report stated that 'world reserves [of natural gas] will probably last for 70 years'.

Unless the documentation style you are following specifies otherwise, the Latin term sic is used in brackets to indicate that material in a quotation is incorrect:

Freedman stated, "Various Indo-European languages such as Rumanian, Hindi, Hungarian [sic], and Serbian exhibit similar morphological patterns." [Hungarian is not an Indo-European language.]

Brackets are used to enclose parenthetical material that is within material already in parentheses:

The first extant cosmological theories were developed by the early Babylonians and Greeks. (See Alan Lightman, Ancient Light [Cambridge: Harvard University Press], pp. 5-9.)

Brackets are used to indicate the isotope of a specific chemical (in chemical formulas):

[¹⁴C] urea

Most current scientific journals use brackets to indicate literature references:

Many authors have described a link between metabolic syndrome and the subsequent development of diabetes [1, 3, 10].

3.12 Hyphens

Hyphens are used to link:

- certain prefixes, suffixes, letters, and numbers with nouns

- compound nouns

- compound modifiers

-spelled-out numbers.

Hyphens are also used for the following purposes:

- to clarify the meaning of certain words

- to divide words

- to express to or through between two letters or numbers

- for specialized scientific notation.

In typewritten documents, a single hyphen represents the typographical en dash, a dash the width of the letter n. Conventions for using hyphens differ from discipline to discipline.