Parentheses

Parentheses should not replace commas or enclose complete sentences. Use them for acronyms, symbols, optional steps, SPL commands, and inline images.

Make the point in each of your sentences without using parentheses. Don't use parentheses in place of commas, to enclose a complete sentence, or to include unnecessary information or an afterthought.

Don't write a lowercase "s" or "es" in parentheses, such as "(s)" or "(es)", after a noun to indicate both singular and plural. Choose the best option for your documentation. See Plurals in parentheses for more guidance and examples.

You can use parentheses in the following cases:

To introduce an acronym
To enclose a symbol
For optional steps in a task
In SPL commands and functions
To show an icon using an inline image

Abbreviations

You can use parentheses to introduce an abbreviation, such as an acronym or initialism. For more guidance on introducing abbreviations in your content, see Abbreviations, acronyms, initialisms.

Review the following table for an example of how to offset an abbreviation with parentheses:


Do this	Don't do this
Use the Splunk Search Processing Language (SPL) to search your data.	Use SPL (the Splunk Search Processing Language) to search your data.

Symbols

Use parentheses to enclose a symbol after spelling it out. See the following example:


Do this	Don't do this
Begin the line with a forward slash ( / ).	Begin the line with a forward slash, /.

Optional steps in tasks

You can use parentheses when explaining that a step is optional in a task. See the following example:


Do this	Don't do this
(Optional) Provide the context for the task in a new paragraph.	Optional: Provide the context for the task in a new paragraph. Provide the context for the task in a new paragraph (optional).

SPL commands and functions

You can use parentheses when writing about 1 or more fields in statistical commands and charting functions for SPL. See the following examples:

Use with earliest(x) and latest(x) to calculate the rate of increase.
The atahn(x) function computes the arc hyperbolic tangent of x radians.

Inline images

You can use parentheses to introduce an icon inline in a sentence. See Inline images for more information.