In No. 72 “Dr. John Watson” is purely parenthetical matter, used to give the reader some information about the name of the man already mentioned. As we have been talking about the man, the information about his name is like an aside,—that is, it is purely parenthetical. This matter may be omitted without affecting the sense of the language in any manner; and, as it is purely parenthetical, it properly takes the marks of parenthesis.
In No. 73 we have both an explanatory group of words and a parenthesis. The first is equivalent to “who is a noted Scotch minister.” In either form it is an essential part of the information the writer wishes to convey. We have already defined such a group as slightly parenthetical, to be set off by commas.
No. 74 is a particularly distractive sentence, although its punctuation may be technically correct. The first picture given in this sentence to the reader is that of a man; the next one, given by the parenthesis, is that of a name. A third thought follows; and this thought is applicable to either a man or a name. As “Watson” is an Irish name, the question may arise in reading No. 74 whether the writer wishes to say “Ian Maclaren,” the man, is Scotch, or “Ian Maclaren,” the name, is Scotch.
There is a conventional way of writing a name of this kind to show that the name is referred to merely as a word. This is done by the use of italics or quotation-marks; and therefore to avoid the distractive effect of No. 74, it may be written thus:
74-1. Ian Maclaren (the pen-name of Dr. John Watson) is unmistakably Scotch.
Here the italics notify the reader that he is to consider the name, not the person named; and this name is a Scotch word.
Like notice would be given by the use of quotation-marks in place of the italics.
The distractive effect caused by producing two impressions through a wrong use of marks of parenthesis, should be avoided.
EXAMPLES
1. I am a lady, and a coward.