by Aquarius » Thu Jul 28, 2011 10:39 am
Not sure how you mean they were used. Also, do you mean brackets as in [ ] or { }, or do you mean parentheses as in ( ) ?
Either way, my inclination is to say no. I've seen parentheses in dialogue, but the move these days is to avoid them all together. They kind of say "Oh, wait, I have to tell you this really important or unrelated thing first before I go on." If it was that important, then it should've been said first any way. And if it's unrelated, it doesn't belong there.
If you're using them to show rambling, stream-of-consciousness dialogue, there are better ways to do it than parentheses.
Yes, you do see some things in pro fic that grammarians say "no" to. Sometimes it's a matter of understanding a rule well enough in order to justify breaking it effectively. Sometimes it's a matter of a publisher's Really Big Client getting their own way. And sometimes it's gray area where there's no "rule" against it, but doing it has negative consequences like pulling your reader out of the story, or it's out of favor for other reasons.
Hope that helped.
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