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I love this nongrammatical/idiomatic use of parentheses actually. Language is a tool, and its rules can be just as powerful when violated as when upheld.

In this case they convey a subtext you can’t get as gracefully by being a slave to syntax— that the author hoped the post would be about how they did achieve success, but that didn’t happen, forcing the parenthetical qualifier. I don’t think another treatment would express that quite as well; you can almost feel the wince.




you’d normally use square braces [for this kind of thing]


Square braces are used to show you are editing a quote for grammar or brevity, not to change the meaning of your own sentence. Ex:

> I love this [...] use of parentheses. [Rules] can be just as powerful when violated as when upheld.


you can also use it in place of commas.




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