Escape parentheses around a number in Google Docs Spreadsheets?

Question

How do you escape parentheses around numbers in Google Docs Spreadsheets so that they don't default to displaying as negative numbers?

Answer 1

Not sure what you want to do with the data and if this would mess it up, but you can prefix the number with a ' (single quote) and it will not display as negative (e.g. '(3) will display as (3)).