Its placement puts it squarely with the noun phrase following it. ToOn Friday 20 August 2010 14:20:35 Bill Longman wrote:
> On 08/19/2010 04:38 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Thursday 19 August 2010 21:21:20 Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> >> So I looked up "auto-hinter" in the flagedit(1) program. It says:
> >> auto-hinter: Local Flag: Use the unpatented auto-hinter instead
> >> of the (recommended) TrueType bytecode interpreter (media-
> >> libs/freetype)
> >>
> >> The placement of the "(recommended)" is just a bit ambiguous.
> >
> > No, it isn't. You may be being confused by the unnecessary
> > inclusion of brackets (parentheses if you're American); remove
> > them and you see that the TrueType byte-code interpreter is
> > recommended. Or, just consider the phrase "the recommended
> > TrueType bytecode interpreter", with or without brackets. I can't
> > see how that could be thought ambiguous.
>
> I have to agree it's ambiguous. You have to wonder why the
> parenthetical "recommended" is offset if it's just part of the
> sentence. If it were as you say, there would be no need to put them
> there. As it is written it sounds like it's making an aside claiming
> that one of them is recommended and, by its placement, it's hard to
> discern its antecedent.
associate it with the preceding one instead would be perverse. (Just to
continue flogging a dead horse...) :-)
I agree though that the brackets are neither necessary nor helpful.
Interesting replies all, especially the OT ones about parentheses, about which more later.
For the me the confusion arises because I've become used to seeing "(recommended)" coming just after the item being described as such. So I would see options a, b (recommended), or c. This was my reason for making the guess I did, although the rest of the punctuation was less clear than my example, thus the ambiguity. As was pointed out, it also struck me that if "recommended" was intended to apply to the second option, the () thingies were better omitted.
<OT>
As to the thingies, I enjoyed discovering that to many people a parenthesis is not a glyph or punctuation mark, but instead the contents of the language set aside in one way or another. I had always regarded parentheses as the round glyphs (), but this turns out to be normative primarily in mathematics, computer programming languages and similar fields. But I find several competing meanings and sources using http://dictionary.reference.com/cite.html?qh=parenthesis&ia=luna
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pa·ren·the·sis
[puh-ren-thuh-sis] 
θə
Show IPA –noun, plural -ses [-seez] Show IPA.
[-seez] Show IPA.
1.
either or both of a pair of signs ( ) used in writing to mark off an interjected explanatory or qualifying remark, to indicate separate groupings of symbols in mathematics and symbolic logic, etc.
2.
Usually, parentheses. the material contained within these marks.
3.
Grammar . a qualifying, explanatory, or appositive word, phrase, clause, or sentence that interrupts a syntactic construction without otherwise affecting it, having often a characteristic intonation and indicated in writing by commas, parentheses, or dashes, as in William Smith—you must know him—is coming tonight.
4.
an interval.
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2010.