Vegetables

Year 1997
People: "You eat vegetables!? I didn't know you eat vegetables."
Me: "Yes, I do."

Year 2007
People: "You eat vegetables!? I didn't know you eat vegetables."
Me: "Yes, I do."

Year 2017
People: "You eat vegetables!? I didn't know you eat vegetables."
Me: "Yes, I do."

Bracket

I think brackets should be used in regular writings, where appropriate. For example, in the article "Free My Phone" that I posed earlier, it says

• breaking the link between (the producers of goods and services) and (the people who use them)
  

If the brackets were omitted, it could be interpreted as

• breaking [the link (between the producers of goods and services)] and (the people who use them)
  

which is wrong.

Let me give another example that is more relevant to our daily life: "Combo meal includes beverage, desert, soup or fries". Which one is it?

• (beverage, desert, soup) or fries. (3 or 1 item)
  
• beverage, desert, (soup or fries). (always 3 items)
  

Let me give yet another example from a computer game

• red (wolf meat). (the meat is red)
  
• (red wolf) meat. (the wolf is red)
  

In fact, Civilization IV has adopted the use of brackets when appropriate to describe tech tree prerequisites. For example, fiber optics requires "computers and (plastics or satellites)".