Do You Use a Period (Full Stop) Before or After Parentheses?

You can use a full-stop period both before and after parentheses, symbolized as (). But there are specific rules for this, you can’t just put a period anywhere. This will rely on if the text inside the parentheses is a phrase or a full sentence. Basically, if it’s a full sentence, keep the period before the parentheses.

Two Rules

There are two basic rules when using a period inside or outside of a parenthesis. This will depend on what kind of information is inside the punctuation.

1. If the information is a list, phrase or partial sentence, keep the period outside:

Correct: The grocery list contained many dairy items (cheese, yogurt and milk).
Incorrect: The grocery list contained many dairy items (cheese, yogurt and milk.)

2. When there’s a whole sentence, place the period inside:

Correct: The grocery list contained many dairy items. (Things like milk, yogurt, cheese and kefir were only a few mentioned.)
Incorrect: The grocery list contained many dairy items. (Things like cheese, yogurt, milk and kefir were only a few mentioned).

Avoid Combining

Remember that you will either use one rule or the other, not both together. The sample sentence is an incorrect usage:

The grocery list contained many dairy items (cheese, yogurt and milk. But there were other things like kefir).

Ways to Use Both

There are a few ways to approach this to keep in line with these punctuation principles. Here’s how you could use both rules correctly:

The grocery list contained many dairy items (cheese, yogurt and milk). (But there were other things such as kefir.)

Alternatively, you could combine both the phrase and the whole sentence with a semicolon to put it in one set of parentheses:

The grocery list contained many dairy items (cheese, yogurt and milk; but there were other things such as kefir).

Another option is to remove the second set of parentheses since the sentence is an entire idea:

The grocery list contained many dairy items (cheese, yogurt and milk). But there were other things such as kefir.

Conclusion

There are two simple rules you have to remember when you want to use a period with parentheses: partial or whole sentences. Remember that partial goes outside the brackets and whole goes inside; you cannot combine the two. It’s not very difficult, but you do have to remember these rules.

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Conor

Conor is the main writer here at One Minute English and was an English teacher for 10 years. He is interested in helping people with their English skills and learning about using A.I tools at work.