Overuse of parentheses, by far. Why is this a bad thing? Parentheses, as read by most readers, tend to contain additional *superfluous* information when read. So naturally, the mind tends to pay less attention to what's inside (or at least my mind does). I also believe it represents some repressed psychological trauma, since a Professor once circled how many times I abused the double dash, "--", and I haven't quite felt comfortable using it since--unless it feels right. As a result, I've found a new punctuation mark to abuse. The parentheses and double dash work all right in that last paragraph, but relying on it leads to bad habits, and usually, sentences that droll on for far longer than welcome. Consider the following example from Naked Lunch: ``` Doc Browbeck was party inna second part. A retired abortionist and junk pusher (he was a veterinarian actually) recalled to service during the manpower shortage. Well, Doc had been in the hospital kitchen all morning goosing the nurses and tanking up on coal gas and Klim -- and just before the operation he sneaked a double shot of nutmeg to nerve himself up. (In England and especially in Edinburgh the citizens bubble coal gas through Klim -- a horrible form of powdered milk tasting like rancid chalk -- and pick up on the results. They hock everything to pay the gas bill, and when the man comes around to shut it off for the non-payment, you can hear their screams for miles. When a citizen is sick from needing it he says "I got the klinks" or "That old stove climbing up my back." Nutmeg. I quote from the author's article on narcotic drugs in the British Journal of Addiction (see Appendix): "Convicts and sailors sometimes have recourse to nutmeg. About a tablespoon is swallowed with water. Result vaguely similar to marijuana with side effects of headache and nausea. There are a number of narcotics of the nutmeg family in use among the Indians of South America. They are usually administered by sniffing a dried powder of the plant. The medicine men take these noxious substances and go into convulsive states. Their twitchings and mutterings are thought to have prophetic significance.") ``` This is the only example I know that dares to put parentheses *and* a long quote within parentheses, unless we're counting math textbooks. In a way it works, since if information is ever *superfluous*, the history of sailors getting high on nutmeg fits that bill. A careful reader might easily pick up on that, but to everyone else, I think a full paragraph of text in parentheses signals the reader to scroll down in the hopes that the story continues. But just in case you think I'm just picking on William S. Burroughs, here's an example I regrettably wrote to a coworker recently with some details removed: ``` [...] As a precaution, I did review $NOBODY's recent $THING_I_WAS_ASKED_TO_REVIEW (if you would like a detailed report on that, I can pull that together for you). ``` Somehow, I managed to take the *one* point worth emphasizing (an entire sentence at that!) and *de*-emphasized it. It's a habit I can't break. So please, if you are a caring reader, do complain when I overuse parentheses. I deserve it.