I used to use them very frequently. It took noticing that I was parenthesizing the second half of almost every sentence I wrote (to add a bit more info, like this), to make me go back and evaluate if I could remove them and replace with commas, or just break the sentence. I found that it was possible on almost all cases. Since then, I started doing this automatically as I started writing a "(" and then I kind of naturally stopped using parentheses so much. It was a bad habit that I somehow formed and found a means to self-correct.

The one place where I find parenthesis really jarring is in the middle of quotes. I just can't wrap my head around something like

> "I'm sending (via email) an encrypted message", Alice said to Bob

Especially in a book that's been supposedly copy edited. Em dashes or commas or just a plain run-on sentences feel much more appropriate for the general lack of structure in real speech.

Parentheses, commas, em-dashes, footnotes, endnotes, and starting new sentences can all be used for interlocutions.

Endnotes maximize disruption, the reader has to turn to the back of the book to find the end note, then return to what they were originally reading. These are best reserved for citations or similar items where the added information is irrelevant to normal reading. Endnotes can have their own endnotes.

Footnotes aren't quite as disruptive as endnotes, but they're close. Footnotes can themselves have footnotes.

Surrounding an interlocution with two copies of the same character, whether a comma or a dash, reduces clarity —or makes the work ugly— when there's more than one interlocution in a sentence.

Parentheses allow nesting, don't disrupt the flow of reading the way footnotes or endnotes do, and don't reduce clarity with multiple interlocutions. It's generally much better to not have multiple interlocutions, as they inherently make the work hard to read. It's especially difficult to read nested interlocutions. But sometimes nested interlocutions are used to good effect, such as Terry Pratchett's humor involving footnotes of footnotes. Parenthetical interlocutions to define the first use of an acronym or initialism are also a good exception to the rule of avoiding multiple interlocutions in a sentence.

"He was certainly a flamboyantly creative writer and inspired teacher; yet one can take him seriously here: “Pricks” performed “tricks” as punctuation became a vehicle to think about the technological revolutions of the time, gender relationships, and literary genres reflecting social and historical concerns like kingship or geographical exploration."

absolute trainwreck.

One of my pet peeves is people opening a parenthesis and never closing it. It's like my brain pushes the parenthetical into a stack and when I get to the end of the paragraph it throws an error.

I definitely overuse parenthesis and I haven't found a way to rid myself of the habit (as I managed to mostly rid myself of the habit of using semi-colons).

Five comments here write "parenthesis" where they mean "parentheses" ... weird.

I don't like the two examples of parenthesis used in the title & subtitle of this piece, where they put wonderful and perfect in parentheses before a noun phrase.

Putting adjectives in parentheses before a noun (phrase) is, yes, a useful device but those adjectives should usually be words that give more (but not necessary) information, rather than purely subjective qualifiers such as the two that the author uses. I know they're probably being a bit tongue in cheek but it still grates a little that these were the two examples they led with.

I just had thw thought: aren't parentheses just punctuation denoting an inline footnote?

I use parentheses too much, and have to catch myself and correct (usually switching to commas or em-dashes) [sic]. I think it's part of the diseased mind caused by a lifetime of programming and recursive syntax.

I don't know why but I seem to use more parenthesis (even if I should be using commas).

I've always wanted to use parentheses in prose the way we do in math, to make grouping explicit:

The (small business) owner. The small (business owner).

or

((Buffalo buffalo) ((Buffalo buffalo) buffalo)) buffalo (Buffalo buffalo).

No Amount of Grammatical Feats Will Make You Look Smart If You Use Word Capitalization.

You can't escape them.

And not a single mention of Lisp? Tsk.

Came for comments with an unreasonable amount of parenthesis; not disappointed.

Now having a revival because AI killed the em dash.