Parenthesis in paper title? I am writing an academic paper with some co-authors and we are thinking of including a word in parentheses in the title. So the title would look something like


  XXXX (YYYY?) XXXX


I have two questions:


Is there any style issue/argument against this? The fact that I need to ask this question in the first place leads me to believe that there is. But I thought I would ask since this may just be a rare occurrence and may not violate any writing/style rules.
In case it is okay, would it be okay for the title to start with the parentheses?
There are many papers out there with parentheses in my title. In particular, there are at least three articles (from different publishers) starting with a parenthesis:


(Patho)physiological Significance of the Serum- and Glucocorticoid-Inducible Kinase Isoforms
(Patho)physiological implications of chronic dietary sodium restriction during pregnancy; a longitudinal prospective randomized study
(Patho)physiological implications of the novel epithelial Ca2+ channels TRPV5 and TRPV6


Thus, there is at least some publishers who do not object to this.

On the other hand, this probably does not hold for all publishers, and there very likely is at least one out there, who objects against parentheses in titles.

Unless there is a clear rule in the publisher’s guidelines, it will be impossible to predict its opinion on this matter. Thus, I would suggest to just use the parentheses and let the publisher or the copy editor, respectively, worry about this.