Hello Tanu,

this could be indicative of hedging or euphemization strategies for mitigation purposes. 

Interesting question dear. 

as per my knowledge, generally women are more talkative then men, using brackets can be a response to an expected question requiring explanation. 

Speaking as a woman writer I have to say that, since we are more logical than men (don't even need studies to tell us that) and are able to set our explanations more clearly aside from the general narrative - though it is also the case that that we have more connections to the thoughts we are expressing - perhaps (and I underscore that, in order not to offend the male half of the species) because we deal more with children (and their more limited comprehensions) we prefer this punctuation to endless commas and semi-colons - which seem to have appealed greatly to Henry James (and the VIctorians in general).

Thanks Mr. Ali, Ms. Zaib, Mr. Salah, and Ms. Morant. Your responses would surely help me in drawing my inferences.

An interesting question but any answer would need to take account of situation, period and genre. Emily Dickinson, for instance, is a very special case of a woman writer who used the dash in her handwritten poems. But when male editors came to publish her they often removed them. I prefer her dashes. 

P.S. You can see how Emily Dickinson used the dash by going to this site --

http://www.edickinson.org/editions/1/image_sets/235495.

There must be some published research on her use of the dash because it is so characteristic of her manuscripts; maybe someone else would have a reference for it?---------

This is because they are not expert writers. They rush for publication without being adroit in writing skill. Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Bronte sisters do not use brackets.

i think firstly they are critically analyse the things then they write it so they are using brackets and dash while writing.

i have one reply also women goes in the depth for getting more and more knowledge .

This question is interesting.

The question has an assumption: Women use dash more often than men.  I am not sure of related numbers, but under that assumption, perhaps, instead of "The use of dash by women is indicative that women are....(intuitive, more logical, better or worse writer, etc)," a more accurate statement would be (based on dictionary):

The women who use a horizontal stroke of varying length (-, —, ——) called 'dash', use it in writing or printing to mark a pause or break in a sentence, a parenthetic clause, an omission of words or letters or of the intermediate terms of a series, to separate distinct portions of matter, or for other purposes; sometimes implying the use of strong language; hence as a mild substitute for devil.

It seems to me that any further generalizations are not warranted, hence needs to be proven by usual metrics and statistics. This seems to be your research gap, Tanu Gupta.

I m highly thankful to all for sparing their time to answer my query. The answers will surely help me but there is a point that always come to my mind when I look at such brackets. It appears as if women are not accustomed to use a straight forward language. The reason being women are not given free hand and always fear what would be the view of the society on her comments or ideas. That's why they tend to speak in a round about manner, sometimes speak more than usual, and sometimes give more explanations than the required ones.

Well, lack of self-confidence and fear of others opinion is a hypothesis you would need to prove.

If I were you, I would add some positive ones: Women are into details and they use brackets and dashes to clarify ideas or to provide more nuances.

So, then, you would need to do two things:

1) Prove 'empirically' your assumption that women writers use more dashes and brackets than their male counterparts;

2) How and why they use it.

Instead of only text-based data collection, you could rely on interviews of female writers, asking them what they think about their usage. I think attributions such as reasons and purposes should come from them, and not from what the researcher perceive as cause.

Dear Park, amazing your idea as " Women are into details and they use brackets and dashes to clarify ideas" is my own point of view. Overall nice suggestions.

This question is concern with accurate statement.But I do not know Why Women  use brackets and dashes to clarify ideas.? The most common use of brackets is to enclose explanatory matter that one adds in editing the work of another writer. They indicate that some kind of alteration has been made in the original text.This concept leads to women behavior. hence it needs to be proven by  statistics.

Dear Park, thanks for your suggestions. I'd like to confirm the things from female writers too. Moreover, Ms. Grover, your idea of proving by statistics will too be of much use.

Why aren't other women and men doing it? It seems so natural to me. Languages are imperfect and clarification is always needed if you want to be understood. To me it is a sign of intelligence and common sense.

It is quite logical that brackets and dashed help us build relations in complex sentences, we separate primary from secondary thoughts and claims, we give further details or introduce something new which has not been discussed previously. We may also express our personal opinion or feelings even if this is not the issue and that is why we will put such emotional comments aside.

I am a man, and I use a dash more often than I use a bracket. But I may use the dash differently. Have you identified what women put between dashes as opposed to men? What they put between brackets as opposed to men? Have you identified the length of what is between the dash or the bracket by gender? Is this female-behaviour genre specific, country specific, style specific?

Your question implies generalization.  You need so much more evidence before you can venture explanation.

It may also be a replacement for nonverbal behavior. 

I am curious to know, how many of those who replied to this question (including me) have checked a reliable reference that confirms that women are using brackets and dashes more than men! we should not exclude the impact of the sample that has been investigated, what if it is biased one?! 

Dear Tanu,

we are more emotional, so we smile :-)))) or upset :-(((( more often than men.

If seriously, maybe, the reason is the more active inner speech - "stream of consciousness", that is defocused on different subjects. So we change our phrase syntax, trying to insert some additional verbal information between parentheses or pairs of commas.  

As it is familiar to every ear, men are, "single focused", but quite a deep focus; on the other hand, women are multi-focused, but in an regular level. Applying these characteristics into writing styles, men have more of a straight forward sentences; oppositely, more of a long sentences, or interwoven expression of more than one point, is visiable in women's writing, in general. As a result, ladies need more of these signs   (; : " , - ]...' ) to clarify their point of views, especially in the deeper and complicated subjects. 

Thanks Dear Benz

I too agree that men are straight forward while women use round about expressions to convey their feelings and gestures. So this could be an appropriate reason for their using such devices.

A good place from which to begin to examine this question would be Deborah Cameron's discussion of 'Gender and Language Ideologies' in Holmes and Meyerhoff (ends.) The Handbook of Language and Gender. ` Her discussion there is also reprinted in Coates and Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: a reader. A careful reading of her discussion would alert us to some problems in the discussion so far.  For the answers published so far have not provided any evidence that women use dashes or parentheses more than men. We should first ask, therefore: 'what exactly is the evidence that women use a particular feature more than men?'. Even this question itself is problematic because it assumes that women constitute a homogeneous group. And men also. But a moment's thought would tell us that Asian women are not necessarily the same as European women, older women are not necessarily the same as younger women, college educated women not the same as ..., and so on. With the same qualifications and provisos applying equally  to men. A lot of what has been written above amounts quite simply to ideology: it assumes in Cameron's phrase "that there are clear-cut stable differences in the way language is used by women and by men.[and that].the differences are seen as natural..and as desirable." But as Cameron shows, there is no systematic, scientific evidence to support these assumptions. They might be interesting; but ultimately they are ideological. Whose interests do they serve?

It could be partly due to detail-intensive professions, I mean people who are having such, regardless of gender, will be using more marks for the purpose of precision. Some examples include researchers (at least those who care about communicating their results), lawyers, translators, writers, journalists, physicians and biology related professions, data or information sensitive professions. Medical translators, unlike other translators, could be fined and sued for any minor mistake (because it might cost a life), therefore they should be more attentive to writing and expression. 

And then, if you account for gender within the above fields, I am almost sure women, as a whole, will be (at least a little) more careful about writing. However, when it comes to the individual, we cannot know because there are too many factors.