Do parenthetical phrases weaken the impact of target terms?

[mollykathariner_ms]

I see that Ryan Boots answered a similar question for Mark Skidmore (http://www.seomoz.org/q/does-using-parentheses-affect-the-crawlers), but I'd like to dig a little deeper.

If I use a key term with a parenthetical phrase in the body copy with either

or

• tags, will it still hold the same weight as it would if I used the same key term without parentheses? Further, would the same answer apply to key terms in the meta description?

  Thank you.

  Joe Donohue

[AlanMosley]

i have never head anything to suggest it would make any difference, but one can not prove a negative, but i doubt it