Talk:Bracket/Archive 1

Terminology
Dear LC, This article is mainly about punctuation in English text. Outside the programming context, "curly braces", or even "braces", is much more common than "curly brackets", but I do think the distinction is useful in programming contexts. I have attempted to deal with the diffrerences in usage in the associated article. I was concerned that readers accustomed to calling them "braces" would be confused by "brackets". "Brackets" is basically a little-used synonym for "braces", and is given as such deep in the definitions in both the Webster's Unabridged and the Webster's Collegiate. The Random House Unabridged gives "brace" as a synonym for "bracket" only in the architectural sense. The OED does not give "bracket" as a synonym for "brace", nor do three college English handbooks I have lying around. My ancient Roget's Thesaurus includes both in a category called Vinculum, but since "hyphen" and "ox-yoke" are also in there, that isn't really data. The more modern Random House Word Menu carefully distinguishes "brackets" from "braces". Of course, none of these sources is particularly sophisticated about computer usage. It is certainly true that the "class of brackets" includes braces, as both this article and the punctuation article clearly state, but the class also includes parentheses, and even though I turned up a reference in the Oxford English Dictionary to "curved brackets", again, hardly anyone actually calls parentheses "curved brackets". See the Talk page under Punctuation for the sharply contrasted etymologies of "braces" and "bracket". Ortolan88 —Preceding undated comment added 11:55, 27 June 2002.
 * Ortolan88, I saw your etymology, and thought it was great. :-) My intent wasn't to emphasize one term over another.  I just wanted to fix two mistakes.  One mistake was that the Punctuation page claimed the symbols were given with their Unicode preferred names, where appropriate, but then it didn't give the Unicode preferred name.  So I fixed the name to match the claim.  It would have been just as good to fix the claim instead.  I was just trying to fix the contradiction. The other mistake is the use of the redundant phrase curly brace.  The standard terms are curly bracket (to distinguish from other types of brackets) and brace (of which there is only one type, so no need to distinguish).  According to the dictionary used by the Associated Press, there is a brace but not a curly brace.  The same is true in the Random House Websters Dictionary.  And the same in the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary.  And the same in the American Heritage Dictionary.  And the same in the Unicode standard index (the one that lists multiple names for each symbol).  I see from Google that some people use the redundant term curly brace, but since it isn't in the standard references to which I have access, it appears to be slang rather than a standard term.  I could have replaced the redundant curly brace with either curly bracket or brace, but I used both so I wouldn't offend anyone.  Apparently unsuccessfully.  :-) --LC —Preceding undated comment added 20:13, 27 June 2002.
 * I'm not offended. I've called them curly braces for 40 years, but what the heck?  Braces is definitely more elegant.  Funny that I gathered all that information without noticing my own term was out of line with the dictionaries!  I think I'll stick with curly braces in my own life, but what you've done  for the 'pedia is fine. Ortolan88 —Preceding undated comment added 20:32, 27 June 2002.


 * I'm likely wrong on this, but it's been my understanding that "brackets" in reference to the family of symbols is British English, and that in the US there's a distinction made between "parentheses" "brackets" [] and "braces" {}.  As far as I know, most Americans would never refer to parentheses as "brackets." 161.11.130.249 17:30, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Brace and Bracket?

 * Falcotron's reference to Ortolan88 hints at what their edits to the talk page in the preceding ten minutes make clear: while they did insert a separator (a horizontal rule) immediately after Ort's last edit in the preceding section (161's contrib was at that time misplaced), they knew how to start a new section, and intended to juxtapose the following contrib with the section that i have now made it subordinate to; a subsection clearly suits their intent better than the independent section that a colleague eventually retrofitted. --Jerzy•t 00:56, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

If brace and bracket don't actually share an etymology, the article really shouldn't say this:
 * Presumably due to the similarity of the words brace and bracket (they share an etymology), many people casually treat brace as a synonym for bracket.

Falcotron 07:08, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't want to change this without verifying that Ortolan88 was right. I found a variety of references that support the contrasting etymologies (e.g., http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bracket and http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=brace), and none that disagree. (If these words are related at all, it's via an as-yet-unattested PIE word for both arms and legs.) So, I changed this to be correct (s/they share an etymology/although they do not share an etymology/). Falcotron 22:16, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Crotchets?
I'd like to see a source for the claim Square brackets are called crochets in Great Britain. I've lived mostly in Great Britain for 32 years, and I've never heard them called anything but "square brackets" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.188.88.54 (talk) 08:54, 17 September 2003
 * I put that in a couple of years ago and I just took it out. Turns out I had misread a definition.  Crochet is an obsolete term for bracket, but only for the architectural bracket, not the typographical bracket.  Sorry about that.  Ortolan88 03:22, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Unicode angle brackets 2004
0x2329 and 0x232A are "LEFT-" and "RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE BRACKET". 0x3008-300B are "LEFT" and "RIGHT ANGLE BRACKET", and the corresponding thing with double, in the "CJK Symbols and Punctuation" Unicode block. There's also the "presentation form for vertical" versions (which include the other kinds of brackets, among other things), which are in the "CJK Compatibility Forms" Unicode block.

They are, I think, used to enclose names of things in Chinese (but I'd have no idea, since I can't actually read Chinese). I'm not sure what the "lenticular brackets" are for, either. They're also unsuitable for normal brackets, since they're very wide.

I'm just surprised that I don't have a font with angle brackets (OS X has many unicode symbols, anyway). --Elektron 05:29, 2004 Jun 14 (UTC)


 * U+3008–U+300B, according to the Unicode standard, are unambiguously wide. So, they're probably just "fullwidth form" variants of the more familiar angle brackets, for use in text consisting mostly of ideographs. The standard doesn't mention the lenticular brackets at all, outside of the code charts. They, and the wide angle brackets, are probably included in Unicode for compatibility with earlier asian character sets. -   &mdash; G&#8621;a&#8645;a | Talk 05:07, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Ancient Chinese, I'm told, didn't have : or ! or, or ? (that was borrowed). Lenticular brackets are used in (Hong Kong) Chinese newspapers, when I checked a couple days ago, so it definitely has nothing to do with earlier character sets. There's probably some CJK reference somewhere that says what it means. --Elektron 07:36, 2004 Jun 18 (UTC)

I'd like to know why the Unicode Angle Brakets appear in grey color in the article.
 * Possibly because of bad browser/OS support. They don't appear at all on OSX (they're replaced by some funny character, which upon enlarging is a square with a funny arrow in it, and "MISC. 2300 23FF TECHNICAL" written on it, hm). Elektron 19:36, 2004 Aug 30 (UTC)

(Legal use)
I've noticed brackets used in legal writing and legal transcripts. What is their purpose in the context? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Christobal (talk • contribs) 01:00, 24 June 2005
 * If there is any difference between the use of (square) brackets in those contexts, to provide within a quote clarifying its meaning, the only such difference i am aware of would be that lawyers seem to faithfully acknowledge when they change the case of written material. E.g., a court decision might include a sentence beginning "Persons of interest may not ..." and a lawyer quoting that decision in a brief would use brackets, writing
 * Smith v. Jones supports this interpretation, in saying that "[p]ersons of interest" lack standing to ...."
 * The brackets there avoid any inference that the S&J decision actually used a lowercase P at that point. If that doesn't address the concern, the question is apparently going to go unanswered unless it is clarified. --Jerzy•t 22:13, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Vinculum
I'm removing vinculum from the main part of the article, because, well, it is a single object that does not bracket text. It does not require the sort of pairing that brackets do. It just happens to "bracket" expressions or groups of symbols in mathematical usage. A google search for "bar-bracket vinculum" yeilds few results, most wikipedia clones. I've made a note of the vinculum later in Bracket &mdash; siro  &chi;  o  05:26, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Unicode
The "angle brackets" in the article appear to be the CJK ones which are fullwidth. I tried changing them to the angle brackets in the "misc technical" code block but they were changed back by the software, so presumably they are the NC form? Anyway, the fullwidth ones look silly in the article :/ porges 05:07, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Angle brackets
The current article looks good, but I think the current symbols used for angle brackets should be changed to simple. My computer just shows them as blank squares. It doesn't recognize the code used. The computer I'm using is quite common, thus a probable majority of people trying to read this article will just see blank squares instead of. I'm tentatively going to change them.--Firsfron 17:09, 8 April 2006 (UTC)


 * The symbol you added is <. That's a greater- or lesser-than sign. An angle bracket is &#9001;.--Primetime 17:44, 8 April 2006 (UTC)


 * ... which show up as blank squares on my computer, and many others. Wikipedia can't really illustrate an angle bracket when many (most?) people won't be able to see it.--Firsfron 01:46, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * With my browser, it doesn't show up in the table of contents. But when one scrolls down, it displays. Is it the same with you? You are correct that this is a problem with Internet Explorer. Other browsers do not have the same problem, but using the template causes most symbols to display in IE outside the TOC. Best wishes, Primetime 15:07, 10 April 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm running Firefox on my Mac (OS X) and all I see are question marks for the angled brackets.. Scktwrnch 14:56, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm running Firefox 2.0 on Windows XP and I also see question marks. On exactly what browser are they working? And why hasn't this been fixed by now? It's been over a year... RobertM525 11:41, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't it be possible to make the letters that don't show everywhere link to an image? That way everyone could see which letter was meant (with some inconvenience though). I'm against replacing them with images, what do we have unicode for? 128.208.3.75 03:57, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I removed the sentence "In some (slightly older) Spanish books, double chevrons may enclose speech." because I am convinced the author of that sencence meant guillemets. If not I request a citation. 128.208.3.75 04:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Parentheses and appositives
I removed this:
 * For example, "George Washington (a rich slaver) was not the wooden figure with wooden teeth that many think him". Indeed, such an interjection is called a parenthesis, and may also be set off with dashes or commas.

Because I've never seen a style guide make a claim that an appositive phrase would be set off by parentheses. I'll try work back in the use of parenthesis. SchmuckyTheCat 23:30, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Brackets in SM nicknames
In the internet age, brackets [ ] and { } are used in nicknames by SM people to show so-called "ownership". I am tempted to add something about it at the end of the article, but SM is always a controversial thing (and surprising in an article of this kind, I suppose), and I am no expert on this, so I am still hesitant to mention it. Would it be appropriate to mention this use of brackets in the article, along with their use in mathematics, sport and law? --Blue Elf 23:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


 * If it's actually a widespread practice (and the different kinds of brackets have different well-understood meanings), I don't think it is inappropriate as such. However, as with internet culture in general, I would be wary of "canonicalizing" a convention that may only be in use in a few BDSM forums/chatrooms and not in others, however much the particpants that use it may consider it standard. I therefore think we should insist on explicit sourcing for such information. Henning Makholm 14:53, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

American & Canadian English
I speculate that in the United States, the unqualified word "brackets" normally refers to [] and "parentheses" refers t, but in other countries, "brackets" means. This article talks nothing about this. Anything to add?? Georgia guy 00:03, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The article does talk about this. Look at the anonymous addition to the Parentheses section on 14 July.


 * This seems to be a strange place to put it, which may be why you missed it. If this is going to be useful, it should be rewritten and moved. Possibly it belongs up top, maybe in a second paragraph before the table of contents, saying that in addition to referring to the class of all these various kinds of brackets, the word "bracket" can also mean specifically parentheses (for Americans) or square brackets (for Brits). Readers probably won't find it buried in the parentheses section, and I can't think of anywhere else it makes sense.


 * But I'm not sure this belongs in the article in the first place. If you read through the talk page, there's already been some discussion about American vs. British usage (and Canadian?), and I suspect that the reason nobody added anything to the article (until the anonymous edit a few days ago) is that nobody could agree on what actually is typical British usage. Also, this is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, and I'm not sure usage information for the word "bracket" is of central importance to an article on the class of brackets. Maybe it belongs on the bracket (disambiguation) page? Falcotron 05:18, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, I made both of the changes I suggested. Again, I'm not sure whether we need this information in either the disambiguation page or the main page. But at least hopefully people will be able to find it now. Falcotron 05:44, 16 July 2006 (UTC)


 * And, if we're going to say parentheses are "sometimes known as... just brackets" maybe we should also say the same about square brackets (typical American usage) and braces (archaic usage in both countries, I believe?). Falcotron 05:47, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Parentheses with Numbers

 * Does anybody know why some people enclose a digit in parentheses after spelling the word out? e.g. There were five (5) ducks in the pond. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Son0rouS (talk • contribs) 15:01, 16 August 2006


 * I know when I write up legal type documents I tend to do that to make absolutely certain there is no confusion or possibility of confusion. In proper English I was taught to only write out numbers under 100 and that was that needed to be done. For every day things it seems to be redundant. Scktwrnch 15:00, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It's probably for those who don't know a lot of English. 67.188.172.165 05:35, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Supposedly a legacy from when contracts were hand-written. —DIV (128.250.80.15 (talk) 05:54, 12 January 2009 (UTC))


 * Here's an example from an Installation Plan for parts on a 777 airplane built by Boeing (I have changed all the numbers to remove proprietary information):


 * BUILD PER DRAWING EXCEPT FASTEN THE 144W6422-603 CLIP TO THE 144W6425-601 WEB USING (3) 9/32 BACR27GV RIVETS (COMMON TO THE CLIP AND WEB ONLY) PER BAC5454-1.


 * Note that the quantity three of rivets is numeric only, but is written as (3). That is, it is more minimal than the "three (3)" usage, but still parenthetical. Boeing business rules stipulate this treatment of quantities to avoid confusion with sizes, such as 9/32", and part numbers.OperaJoeGreen (talk) 04:44, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Emoticons Redirect
I've reworded the message at the beginning as it sounded a bit awkward. It said: "For technical reasons, some emoticons redirect here, such as :), :(, etc. because : is an unsupported character. :P takes you to P." I've changed it to "For technical reasons, some emoticons redirect here. Ones such as :) & :( will because : is an unsupported character." I removed the last part because it just isn't needed. I think the general idea is conveyed in the explanation. --Son0rouS 11:25, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Any concern about the technical reasons is irrelevant to the article as a whole and especially so to the HatNote Dab msg, which is there to get users where they want to go as quickly and smoothly as possible. I made it read
 * Titles like ":[" and ":)" redirect here. For typographical portrayals of faces, see Emoticon.
 * deviating from the Redirect format
 * only to address the inadequacies that the template has in this specific case (which most editors will be identify with little effort). If you're concerned to clarify the technical limitations involved, there may be a page like WP:technical limitations that you should create or enhance. --Jerzy•t 21:51, 15 January 2010 (UTC)
 * only to address the inadequacies that the template has in this specific case (which most editors will be identify with little effort). If you're concerned to clarify the technical limitations involved, there may be a page like WP:technical limitations that you should create or enhance. --Jerzy•t 21:51, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

British English
I concur with the author who wrote that in other countries the signs is called brackets. I was educated in British schools and we called brackets. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.146.15.222 (talk) 19:06, 14 September 2006
 * 'Brackets' is a colloquial term for the objects. 'Parentheses' is the correct (formal) name in any English I am aware of, including British English.  Similarly, people sometimes call them 'curved brackets', 'round brackets', etc., and again these are all acceptable in informal settings, but are not actually the correct name.
 * —DIV (128.250.80.15 (talk) 05:58, 12 January 2009 (UTC))

Allowing for a possible change in the number of subjects from singular to plural.
I could find no written rule that applies to whether one should use a space before the opening parenthesis in this case. For example, "If you fail to comply with this requirement, this policy shall apply in the same manner it would have applied had such policy(ies) been so maintained in force." It is my understanding that a space is not used. The Elements of Style does not address this usage however; in the index there are several possibly plural terms listed omitting the space. For example, "adjective(s)", "modifier(s)", "verb(s)", etc.

Kaos Klerik 19:39, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


 * In such cases, you can consider rewording the phrase. "...had such policy or policies been so maintained..." would sound more natural. Xiner (talk, email) 17:56, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Just to second that suggestion, I would encourage rephrasing to avoid the brackets most of the time unless there is a specific need for brevity over clarity. Try reading text aloud and you will probably notice the extra time it takes to mentally expand "object(s)" into "one or more objects" and then choose the most appropriate variation of what is written.  Shorthand is great for writers but not so good for readers, a premature optimisation for the programmers among you.  Keep it as clear and simple as possible unless there is a specific need to do otherwise.  -- Horkana (talk) 02:50, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Still a Stub?
Why is this article listed as a "Stub"? It seems well beyond that to me. What else would it need to upgrade? Colincbn 16:59, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * It isn't. The "history" section is tagged as being a stub, which does not seem inappropriate given its extreme brevity. –Henning Makholm 19:22, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, I see. My mistake. Thanks for the reply. Colincbn 05:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Silly Question
This might already be answered but I couldn't seem to find it in the main body of the article. What do you call the individual brackets or parenthesis? Is it "left" and "right" or "open" and "close" or something else entirely? Thanks, Colincbn 16:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * "A bracket" or "a parenthesis". (It is "parentheses" in plural). A "parenthesis" may also refer to the entire parenthesized expression, including bracket glyps and the content between them, or to the content alone. There seems to be no universally understood short way of overcoming this ambiguity in English, except for disambiguating explicitly (e.g. "opening parenthesis character") where one fears misunderstanding. –Henning Makholm 19:26, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I was wondering because of a separate article on ASCII art that needs to specify which of the two types are used while making pictures and emotions and things of that nature. Colincbn 05:21, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Bracket (mathematics)
User:Salix alba has taken it upon himself, without any discussion, to create Bracket (mathematics) and move content to that article. Maybe that's a good idea, maybe not, but I think it would be prudent to check if there's any dissent to such a proposal after the event, if not beforehand. Do any of you good people out there in Bracketland object to having the mathematics content moved to its own article? --Aim Here 11:40, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The reasons for splitting are many. This article seems primarily concernerd with typesetting so a full treatment of the many mathematical uses, is beyond the scope of this article. It also allow the new article to be placed in various mathematical categories, and serves as a more appropriate link target for mathematical articles which need to use the term. --Salix alba (talk) 12:06, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * That sounds reasonable. —Ben FrantzDale 12:51, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Curly bracket example
"Select your animal {goat, sheep, cow, horse} and follow me" sounds to me rather artificial, like something an NPC in a video game would say. Can we get a more natural-sounding example, preferably one from a moderately well-known work of literature? Neon Merlin  04:41, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

Hoinkies
Does anyone have the ref cited to see if this is for real? I've used Unix for 25 years and never heard this terminology. It isn't in the Jargon File and doesn't google well. I have to say it sounds like utter bs to me. Quale 01:20, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

I've removed it because it's so rare -- certainly not used "often" as the writer had suggested -- and IMO not remotely notable enough for this article. 86.160.226.159 (talk) 12:16, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Angle brackets 2007
I've removed the Unicode characters placed by an editor because they render in my browser (Firefox, recent version) as "? ?", which is much worse than any typographical discrepancy between the ordinary "< >" characters and the "correct" ones. (Same result with Internet Exploiter, meaning that 99% of the readers here would see the wrong thing in any case). Please do not reinsert the Unicode characters. +ILike2BeAnonymous 06:43, 25 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Works fine for everyone else. SchmuckyTheCat
 * Wikipedia never uses kludges to get around the fact that not everyone can see all Unicode characters correctly. We went through this several years ago when deciding whether to use IPA or XSAMPA to represent pronunciations. Not everyone can see all IPA characters, but everyone can see all XSAMPA characters. Yet we went with IPA because it's standard and correct, and XSAMPA is just a kludge. Incidentally, the angled brackets show up fine for my recent version of Firefox on both my home and work computers. More likely, you just don't have a font installed that includes the characters. The Unicode template currently selects the following fonts in order of preference: "Code2000", "Code2001", "Free Serif", "TITUS Cyberbit Basic", "Doulos SIL", "Chrysanthi Unicode", "Bitstream Cyberbit", "Bitstream CyberBase", Thryomanes, Gentium, GentiumAlt, "Lucida Grande", "Free Sans", "Arial Unicode MS", "Microsoft Sans Serif", "Lucida Sans Unicode". Of these, at least Arial Unicode MS, Code2000, and FreeSerif include the angle brackets, and maybe others do as well. —Angr 15:18, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm... maybe the problem is with the MediaWiki software. I just noticed that the symbols used on this page are not Unicode's normal angle bracket symbols, U+2329 and U+232A, but rather the CJK angle brackets symbols, U+3008 and U+3009. But when I tried fixing them, nothing happened -- it just switched back to the CJK symbols. Still, Arial Unicode MS and Code2000 both have those symbols, so if you have either of those fonts installed, they should display correctly. —Angr 17:15, 25 October 2007 (UTC)


 * I think editors should resolve this issue by discussion rather than reverts. I agree with IL2BA that the two most used browsers (Firefox and IE) can't display characters properly which post a problem for 99% of the editors. So please just use the "< >". Chris!  c t 05:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
 * As I said above, Wikipedia never uses kludges to get around the fact that many users can't see Unicode characters properly. Frankly, that's their problem, not ours. And it isn't true that Firefox doesn't display these characters correctly: I use Firefox both at work and at home and they display just fine for me. If someone's using Firefox and the characters don't display, it's not because of Firefox. More likely, it's because they don't have a font installed that includes the character. —Angr 08:52, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
 * P.S. It works on IE for me as well, so these brackets can be displayed on that browser too. Whatever the reason is why IL2BA can't see the angle brackets, it isn't the browsers. —Angr 11:49, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Excuse me. It is our problem. No, since Wikipedia is not exclusively for those who can see unicode and nobody WP:OWN this article, I see no reasons for us to use unicode here. I mean, why can't we just use "< >" instead? There is no problem with using these symbols. Everybody can see them. Chris!  c t 23:25, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
 * We can't just use < > instead because they are the wrong characters. They are not angle brackets. We don't write "ae" instead of "æ" when writing in IPA or Old English. We don't write "p" instead of "ρ" when writing in Greek. And so on. If we used < > instead, we would be lying to our readers. —Angr 06:00, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Angle brackets 2007 -- arbitrary break 1

 * I'm sorry; I just can't hold my tongue any longer. This is just plain stupid. Take, for instance, this statement in a recent edit summary by someone restoring the Unicode characters here:
 * If your browser doesn't display Wikipedia pages properly, get a better browser.
 * The reason this is stupid is that this statement is implicitly being thrown in the face of every reader of this article, not just me as an editor. The fact is that in my browser, which is Firefox, one of the world's most widely-used programs for this purpose, after Internet Explorer, the Unicode characters do not display at all. All I see is "? ?". Which means that somewhere around 90% of all readers who read this article will see the same thing.
 * The problem is not a "better browser". We cannot admonish our readers to "get a better browser" if we use a problematic character set in our pages here and they end up seeing "? ?" instead of the intended characters.
 * Just to be clear about this, when I say that Firefox is not the problem, I mean Firefox and the "normal" selection of fonts found on home computers. You may be correct that I'm missing a font needed to display these Unicode characters. But that also means that very many of the other readers of this page will also be missing those fonts. I don't remember seeing any warning messages on the front page of Wikipedia alerting me that I need to have certain fonts installed on my computer in order to render the contents of pages therein correctly. To do so would be an unreasonable requirement; it basically means forgoing certain features of fonts that may or may not be installed on the typical reader's computer, and instead using a more "vanilla" font that is more likely to at least render something in the majority of cases.
 * So far as your insistence that these are the "wrong" characters, I also challenge that. They may not be exactly typographically correct, technically speaking. But consider all the various texts published in the world that use these characters, each set in a different typeface which renders these angle brackets slightly differently. There is wide variation in how these characters are rendered exactly from font to font: the angle of the opening, proportion of width to height, thickness of line. So what? What matters is that the reader is being presented with a form of the character that is likely to display at all on his or her screen.
 * Angr, would you mind telling us why and how these are the "wrong" characters?
 * As an extra-credit exercise, I wonder if someone here would be willing to do us a favor and put in a comparison chart, here on the discussion page, which shows all these various character encodings, so that we might be able to evaluate them and report which ones do and don't display with our own browsers. I would if I knew how, but I'm not familiar enough with the character sets to do so. +ILike2BeAnonymous 07:49, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, these 90% etc figures that you keep throwing around are complete and utter nonsense. I use Firefox (newest version) at home and at uni, and the unicode characters display perfectly fine. As has been stated several times, the problem cannot therefore be in the browser. There is a line that Wikipedia needs to draw between making it accessible for everybody and maintaining integrity in our articles. The greater-than, less-than symbols are typographically and visually distinct from angle brackets. Using < > instead of proper angle brackets is like using (a) instead of @. It is simply incorrect. Wikipedia cannot possibly be expected to cater to all users in all situations all the time if it comes at the expense of article accuracy. Rather than detrimenting Wikipedia's integrity, maybe you could try this. Maelin (Talk | Contribs) 08:41, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Angle brackets 2007 -- arbitrary break 2
Just a thought, Unicode U+2329 and U+232A are represention of angle brackets, not the definition of an angle bracket. I've seen many a maths paper using plane old <,> for angle brackets well before the invention of unicode. --Salix alba (talk) 08:59, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Sure, and I've seen many linguistics papers that use < > for orthographic representation. It's a kludge for typographic convenience, but it isn't correct. —Angr 11:38, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm copying what I said about the bracket issue in another place: The candidates for the left bracket are U+003c (&#x003c;), U+2329 (&#x2329;), U+3008 (&#x3008;), U+27E8 (&#x27e8;) and U+2039 (&#x2039;). The first of these is the "less than sign" so that is probably out for wikipedia purposes, the second of these looks promising but Unicode has made it canonically equivalent with the thrid and their notes have a remark that this canonical equivalence has made this character roughly useless since the third comes from the CJK range and it's size is therefore too large too fit with latin or mathematical text. So I guess I would vote for using the fourth (U+27E8, &#x27e8;) with mathematics (it is defined as "MATHEMATICAL LEFT ANGLE BRACKET") even though it may be poorly available in fonts since it has only recently been introduced and the fifth (U+2039, &#x2039;) "SINGLE LEFT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK" for denoting dialog and orthography in linguistics. Comments? Stefán 20:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I do not think a web browser can function without reading the "<" and ">" characters, so I think any browser can display them, which is optimal. Anyway, Mediawiki automatically replaces < with &amp;lt; (&lt;). --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 18:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

(The following posted as a reply to user Henning Makholm, and as a general comment)

I think your insistence on using only the "official", "approved" versions of the angle-bracket characters is counterproductive to this article.

1. Consider the context: this is supposed to be a general article for a lay readership, not a specialist article in an academic journal. If this article were in a journal of mathematics, for instance, then it would be entirely appropriate to insist on the typographically-correct characters, and even to warn readers that they must have current software installed on their computers in order to correctly render these characters. But there is no such requirement with Wikipedia. So far as I know, there are no warnings or alerts to readers that they must have certain versions of software installed in order to see the content of articles here, so the assumption would be that anyone with a functioning web browser should be able to read articles here and have their contents rendered correctly. (This leaves aside the matter of text-only browsers, but that's not relevant to this discussion anyhow.)

2. Your insistence on the "correct" characters leaves readers like me with missing information in the article. This is a bad thing. Instead of recognizable characters, I see "? ?" throughout the article. This is not a tolerable situation.

3. Again, considering the context, what is the big deal with insisting on the "correct" characters in any case? Let's look at what we're talking about here: a couple of characters consisting of two lines joined in a vertex, pointing left and right. I still fail to see how the article would not be well-served by simply using the ordinary keyboard charcters "&lt;" and "&gt;" in most places (not all, as explained below) in order to actually show those characters to the reader, without requiring them to have any particular level of software installed on their computer? The "correctness" that you so doggedly insist on is a barely-perceptible difference between glyphs, perhaps in the thickness or length of the lines, or the angle of the vertex. So what difference does this really make? What compelling case can you make that accuracy is being ill-served here by using the ordinary, garden-variety characters on everyone's keyboard? Characters that most people (i.e., those who aren't academic specialists) call "angle brackets"?

I reject the argument, made here, that what I'm proposing is tantamount to allowing "(a)" to represent the "at sign (@)"; it is not even close. The previous is an obvious contrivance cobbled up to look (faintly) like something else. The difference here, between the keyboard "angle brackets" and the typographically-correct glyphs, is tiny by comparison, and nobody will mistake the ordinary less-than and greater-than symbols for anything else.

I'm not saying that each and every instance of "&lt; &gt;" should be replaced here; it is appropriate to discuss the subtleties of differences and the use of different glyphs, as well as coding systems such as Unicode, etc. But the article should show instances of these characters to all readers, regardless of the state of their browser or operating system (within reason, of course; nobody's saying that we should expect correct results on a machine with, say, only three fonts installed, or something equally ridiculous).

Please, let's not become so anal here that we only create confusion, rather than imparting information, which after all is (supposedly) the whole point of this exercise. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 19:58, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Angle brackets 2007 -- arbitrary break 3

 * A better example would be saying that the ℃ character is preferred over °C . --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 21:00, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Of course, ℃ is not only not preferred, it's deprecated. —Random832 21:12, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


 * (Replying to next-to-last comment) Yes, that's an excellent example. (Reply to last comment) Huh? What's your point? To which glyph are you referring? ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 21:28, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

This has already been discussed at length. The facts still stand: &lt; and &gt; are not angle brackets, and it would be a lie to claim that they are. This is not just a feel-good website; it is an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia must not lie. This is not negotiable. It holds even if some readers who lack the fonts to show the truth would be able to view the lie. The article does show instances of angle brackets to all readers who are able to view the image in the sidebar. People with pure ASCII-based text browsers cannot see angle brackets no matter how we do, and they would not be helped by our lying to them. –Henning Makholm 12:51, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but this question has still never been definitively answered here. Please tell us: in just what way do "&lt;" and "&gt;" (the standard keyboard characters) not represent angle brackets? What typographical tests do they fail? What would be the harm in using them to represent these characters? Who would even notice, much less object? Please be specific and thorough in your answer. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 18:22, 17 January 2008 (UTC)


 * You have been told the difference in form and function several times, still visible on this talk page. Your continued and unexplained refusal to read those explanations strains my ability to assume good faith. –Henning Makholm 17:59, 19 January 2008 (UTC)


 * They are not angle brackets because that's not what they are definitively called. The Unicode names are "003C LESS-THAN SIGN" and "003E GREATER-THAN SIGN".  The  ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998 standard also calls them "Less-than sign" and "Greater-than sign". They have the Unicode property "Sm" (symbool, math), not any of the punctuation properties Po, Pe, Pi, Ps that other types of brackets have.  And since there are specific characters which are called angle brackets, then the less-than and greater-than signs most definitely are not such.  This would be similar to saying why not use "l" instead of "1", since in some fonts they certainly look the same, and if you don't have modern equipment (e.g., a really old typewriter), you don't have this newfangled one digit, so you have to use lower-case L...who will notice anyway?  As far as the appearance, in general the less/greater signs are significantly different from angle brackets in most typefaces.  The signs are generally vertically centered, and usually of x-height, are much more squat and wide (probably about an en-space), and of also of a similar weight and color of other mathematical symbols and letters.  Angle brackets on the other hand are usually full height (they extend into the descender/ascender regions), are much more narrow (with a less acute angle), and are often of a lighter weight than letters.  They look different.  Now, it is very true though that the less-than and greater-than signs are often used as adequate substitutes for actual angle-brackets, and as such can be effectively angle brackets in some cases.  And the computer-use section I think fairly describes this usage.  But this is just like ??( and ??) can also be effectively square-brackets in some cases too.  That doesn't actually make them real square brackets though. -- Dmeranda (talk) 17:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Angle brackets 2007 -- arbitrary break 4

 * Strange, my browser (Mozilla FireFox) is no longer showing the angle brackets either.... just question marks. --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 02:24, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The characters shown were changed on 2008-01-18 by User:Henning_Makholm from U+3008 to U+27E8 (and the corresponding closing bracket), and this is probably what broke it for you. See the table in the next discussion section.  I don't think it is just a browser issue, but more of a platform issue.  When using FF under Linux I can see both sets of characters, but FF under Windows XP can not display U+27E8.  Although I haven't tried, IE, Mac, or other environments are certain to have still different results.   That being said, I'm not sure that the recent change was a correct one; as U+27E8 is specifically only for mathematical display whereas U+3008 is a general punctuation bracket.  I don't necessarily agree with the CJK rationale for avoiding U+27E8, especially why that is somehow more important than avoiding math symbols in place of general punctuation. (U+27E8 would be appropriate in the discussion about mathematics usage, but U+3008 seems more appropriate to me for general text use).  This has been talked to death, but I still don't think there's any consensus except that it most certainly should not be the less-than sign (and even that is contested by some). The Unicode standard is just too ambiguous on the matter, and it becomes even more confusing because different browser/OS combinations have different often-poor rendering capabilities.  -- Dmeranda (talk) 18:21, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
 * U+300x are explicitly defined as being for use with Chinese/Japanese/Korean script; they are not appropriate in English prose. Similarly, the normative Unicode database defines U+232x as canonically equivalent to U+300x, which means that for all Unicode-conforming purposes they should be considered the same character. Therefore U+232x are not appropriate in English prose either. In particular, they cannot be considered "general punctuation" when they are the same as CJK brackets. Browsers will often display them using CJK-width glyphs, which make them look quite wrong. –Henning Makholm 04:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
 * First I think we can all agree that by the strictest definition, all three pairs U+2329/A, U+27E8/9, and U+3008/9 are technically "angle brackets" (and it can be argued that perhaps less-strict definitions may be appropriate). But even with just those three, the question is not which is valid, but rather which among them is the best choice given the context in which they are being used.  Yes, I agree U+3008/9 are clearly intended for use within CJK/East Asian scripts, not so much because of any unique linguistic purpose but mainly because of special kerning requirements.  But don't overlook that U+27E8/9 are equally intended to only be used within mathematical contexts (it even has a different Unicode property than all other "brackets"), so I don't think it is any more appropriate for use in English prose either (although it is very appropriate within the mathematics section).  I actually think that U+2329/A is the best choice for general use; and I think you may be interpreting more into the meaning of "canonical equivalence" than what I read.  That only means that it is decomposable, usually for normalization purposes, not that it is to be interpreted as actually being the same character.  Among the things it doesn't imply is that it is also restricted to the same script; so just because U+2329 can be decomposed to U+3008, that doesn't make it a "CJK" character.  Also, just because some browsers may decide to actually perform the decomposition just so they can do a missing glyph substitution does not make it the same character either.  And neither is it on the list of deprecated characters.  So ignoring all font/browser-related issues, why is U+2329/A not the best choice among those three for general use in English prose?  It's certainly not any worse is it? - Dmeranda (talk) 07:44, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
 * If I understand you correctly, only Linux computers with Firefox can see these characters? I'm all for wheelchair ramps, but only if people with legs can get up them too. --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 23:26, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
 * No, visibility is not a matter of platform and browser (there have been success reports for all common combinations), only one of whether appropriate fonts are installed on the system. This may or may not be the case regardless of operating system and browser software. –Henning Makholm 04:04, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Table for comparison
Here, I've started the table I talked about earlier. I'd sure appreciate it if someone could fill in those other characters so we could compare them. I really don't even know the differences between the standard keyboard angle brackets and those other characters; if someone would be kind enough to fill them in below, we'd have a good reference here. +ILike2BeAnonymous 02:45, 29 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Since I also cannot see these Unicode angle brackets, perhaps someone could describe for me how they're different from the standard keyboard angle brackets...? And could someone cite something stating that the "<" and ">" symbols aren't used for these supposedly incorrect purposes? Is this article describing them or prescribing them...? RobertM525 11:47, 11 November 2007 (UTC)


 * My questions exactly, and I'm afraid things are coming down more on the prescriptive side.
 * I wish someone would fill in that table above with those Unicode characters so we can compare notes on this (using our respective browsers). Anyone? +ILike2BeAnonymous 11:53, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I've filled in the table and added an image everyone can see showing the difference between angle brackets (tall, with an obtuse angle) and the greater-than and less-than signs (short, with an acute angle). And we're not being "prescriptive", we're calling things by their proper names and describing their proper typographic functions. As Maelin mentioned above, &lt; and &gt; are no more angle brackets than "(a)" is the at sign, or "(c)" is the copyright sign, even if people sometimes use them that way for convenience. Before we compare notes, though, everyone please make sure you have a font installed that includes the angle brackets, such as Code2000, Aboriginal Serif or Aboriginal Sans Serif, Cardo, FreeSerif, or Junicode. (Arial Unicode MS has them too, but it costs money.) —Angr 12:49, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Assuming the article isn't changed, it at the very least needs a technical warning that it contains Unicode characters not commonly found on (apparently) Windows or Macintosh machines. You shouldn't have to read the talk page to find out why the article is talking about "?" as if it were a bracket (which is what the article appears like). RobertM525 08:30, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I would also like to know why these symbols—apparently relatively common and highly useful symbols—were left out of the Unicode for Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana, and various other common fonts. It would seem that they are being left out because they're not being used by non-typesetting-purists. In which case, it is not something like the substitution of (c) for ©, but of a shift in symbol use to something more easily accessible. (Assuming the declaration of those symbols as the right ones was made by something authoritative in the first place.) RobertM525 08:39, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Just to supply a data point here, the only Unicode characters I can see in the table above (i.e., the only ones that don't render as "?") are U+2039 (‹) and U+203A; (›). I'm using a Wintel box w/Windows 2000, a fine example of an older computer that the owner (me) hasn't bothered to add extra fonts to, so I would imagine quite representative of its vintage. Unless one wants to specifically punish such users for their obtuseness and lack of total computer literacy, I suggest we jettison these "typographically-correct" characters. The question asked above&mdash;how these characters are different from the keyboard angle brackets&mdash;still has not been answered, and it seems to come down to one editor's (Angr) say-so; I cannot say whether they're an "authority" on the subject or not, but let's just say I have my doubts. +ILike2BeAnonymous 17:34, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You mean you can't see the difference in the image to the right? The two don't even look similar. As for jettisoning the typographically correct characters, that's simply out of the question. We don't refuse to use IPA characters even though more people can see SAMPA, and we use characters from writing systems from all over the world, even though many people can't see them all. If this article is going to discuss angle brackets, it needs to show angle brackets, and not symbols people sometimes use instead when they can't be bothered to use angle brackets. I've given you a list of free fonts above that include these brackets; if you still can't be bothered to install at least one of them, you're clearly no longer discussing the issue in good faith. —Angr 19:03, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I have trouble believing this is even an issue. Of course we should not use inequality signs for angle brackets; that would be completely misleading. Yes, people in ASCII-only environments will not be able to see the angle brackets, but at least they will be aware that they're not seeing the character being spoken about. Showing a different set of characters and claiming it to be angle brackets would amount to lying, plain an simple. (For the record, I don't think that U+2039/U+203A are useful approximations of angle brackets either. They are single guillemets, and not proper for any of the uses described for angle brackets. –Henning Makholm 23:27, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Will someone please answer the $64,000 question that still hasn't been answered here:
 * What is the difference, typographically speaking, between "inequality signs" and angle brackets? Is there any well-defined standard for either of these things? What, is there some committee of the ISO meeting somewhere in Brussels, or Geneva, or wherever, specifying the line weight, angle, etc., of these characters?
 * I'll grant you that there may be conventions for the use of these characters, in mathematics texts, etc., however ill-defined they may be, but I'll be really surprised if anyone can come up with an authoritative specification for these glyphs. +ILike2BeAnonymous 06:12, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, here are some typographical differences:
 * Angle brackets have dimensions similar to those of parentheses: They typically descend below the baseline and reach at least as high above the baseline as digits and upper-case letters do. Their width is much less than their height. (Thus, the angle is markedly obtuse).
 * Greater-than and less-than are not nearly as tall as digits; often their height is little more than the x-height. They may float a bit above the baseline. Their width is roughly the same as their height. (Thus, the angle is markedly acute).
 * –Henning Makholm 22:26, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't understand why you think this question hasn't been answered. Above I explained the difference in form between the two sets of glyphs (and it's also shown in the image), and the article itself explains the difference in function. As to the question whether these differences are codified by a standard or by convention, of course they're convention. The form and function of virtually all typographic characters are determined by convention; and the form, of course, varies from typeface to typeface. There are only a handful of glyphs whose form is set down by official standards, such as the estimated sign, the CE mark, and the euro sign (although most font designers ignore the specifications and draw a euro symbol that fits in with their font). But if you're hoping to undermine the argument that angle brackets and inequivalency symbols are distinct in form and function on the grounds that the distinction is pure convention, you're out of luck: the distinction in form and function between C and G is also pure convention, but you will certainly not convince anyone that the two are therefore interchangeable. —Angr 19:01, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

From the unicode character table: U+2039, U+203A are single-left angle quotation. U+2329 and U+232A are left-pointing angle bracket, U+27E8 and U+27E9 are mathematical left angle bracket and U+3008, U+2009 are left angle bracket. So <, U+2039 are both incorrect in unicode. --Salix alba (talk) 08:23, 13 November 2007 (UTC)


 * In HTML, XML and related, the standard marks for ... are the good old fashioned less than and greater than signs. Do these count as bracketed expressions? --Salix alba (talk) 08:36, 13 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Arguably yes, in that the signs occur in matched pairs, are each other's mirror images, and serve to enclose something in a more-or-less convex, partly imagined outline. Another case of &lt; and &gt; serving the role of brackets is in the template syntax of C++, copied for generics in Java and C#. I would consider it a mistake to typeset these syntaxes with angle brackets rather than &lt; and &gt;. –Henning Makholm 22:10, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Why doesn't someone just upload a small picture of angle brackets, and then include the picture inline in the section, so the rest of us don't see question marks? bd2412 T 08:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

For technical reasons, :) (smiley face) and some similar combinations starting with : redirect here. See emoticon.
Anyone mind if I remove this? --Henry W. Schmitt (talk) 08:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I mind. Why would you want to remove this, do you not think that people who enter ":)" into the search box and press Go would like to be presented with a link to the article on emoticons? Stefán (talk) 18:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Quick Q
I've seen, in the NIV Study Bible, tiny L- shaped brackets around certain words (in a sub-script sort of style) (└example┘) - note that the brackets I refer to are lower down the word than the ones I've shown here), used (I believe) to indicate that a word is implied. I can't find them mentioned on the wikipedia, or as a proper symbol in word - does anyone know anything more about these? --El Pollo Diablo (Talk) 15:09, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm... doesn't sound like any bracket standardly used with the Roman alphabet. It's reminiscent of the brackets 「 」 used in East Asian writing systems, but a little different. It's probably just an ad-hoc system the editors of the NIV Study Bible thought up. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 19:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Warning to users
I just added a ref tag on the angle brackets section of the article, following the suggestion given by RobertM525 above. Someone please add some fonts recommendations to that note. I should clarify that I have Arial Unicode MS installed, and I still see them as ? ?. Waldir talk 15:02, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Accounting use
The use of brackets to instead of minus sign for negative value seem to be an american accounting notation only. I read a couple of other european articles and no mention of that notation was made. It is also a common britsh practice ? Ghaag (talk • contribs) 10:41, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Three-way, anybody?
In my opinion, this article's a mess. If I didn't know what "brackets" were, I'd be no further educated after consulting this article. The worst sin I can point to is what appears to be an indescriminate switchover, throughout, between and [] in both the examples and in the actual article narrative, making it impossible to tell, if you're looking at context, just what a bracket set is, and what it's used for. Under these conditions, it's difficult to tell the difference between the definition of a parenthesis and a bracket (did I not already know).

Maybe we can do a thing where, instead of trying to define the bracket using all possible definitions in one article, we split it and make three articles, with disambig. page. For example, 1) an American (English)-punctuation/style article, 2) a British-punctuation/style article, and 3) an article devoted to the bracket used in mathematics and tech (computer/code terminology/use, etc.). What you think?  Sugarbat (talk) 16:13, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

:) :(
This is a smile. Can be used and where on the internet. There is also a frown. This also can be used anywhere on the internet. :) :)                 ROCK ON! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.35.199.24 (talk) 22:48, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

 CAN BE USED AND WHERE!  _ This is sad face. 

--86.133.127.63 (talk) 14:06, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Reminds me of your mother shortly before I had my way with her. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.35.199.24 (talk) 14:26, 10 Jan 2009 (UTC)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.193.0.212 (talk)

nested parentheses
I added tags to request citations for the statements regarding the proper way to nest parentheses. As far as I know, when there are two levels of parentheses, the correct way is to use brackets for the outer level, and parentheses for the inner level [as in this example (with parentheses inside and square brackets outside).] Do we have a citation indicating that the other way around (with parentheses outside [and square brackets inside]) is correct? 69.140.152.55 (talk) 18:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't help with a citation, but I (British) was taught to do it the other way around: for the outer level and [] for the inner one. I can't remember ever seeing square brackets used for the outer level. 81.159.61.104 (talk) 17:37, 28 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I supplied a good quality reference for the brackets within parenthesis usage. But I couldn't find one for the subsequent claim of alternating them when more than two levels are needed. - Dmeranda (talk) 03:25, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

"Uses of “<” and “>”"
I have changed the line "in C++, C#, and Java they delimit generic arguments and preprocessor directives" to "in C++, C#, and Java they delimit generic arguments", as in C++ and C, they don't delimit any preoprocessor directive, C# doesn't have a parametric preprocessor (and also no #include directive), and (as far as I am informed) Java until today doesn't have a builtin preoprocessor.

Angle brackets can be used within preoprocessor directives, but they don't delimit them. Note that generic programming has nothing in common with the prepocessor (C++ build process in short: preprocess -> parse sourcecode and instantiate generics + compile -> link).

Phresnel (talk) 09:42, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

TeX markup version
I agree with many of the previous correspondents that use of in place of 'true' angle brackets is diabolically awful in appearance, at least for mathematics. Here is a suggestion: why not use MediaWiki TeX markup, which is specially designed for this — i.e. for mathematical usage in any language?


 * $$\left \langle \frac{a}{b} \right \rangle$$
 * $$\left \langle x \right \rangle$$

Both of these are displayed automatically as SVG's PNG by the rendering engine for me, and I imagine most people can view them, the code makes sense, it's easy to implement, it's flexible.... What's not to like?! On top of this, if the rendering to PNG isn't implemented under some conditions, then it can be forced.

However the article should still mention all of the candidate characters for angle brackets, in particular the UNICODE code numbers and names, because it is the only dedicated WP entry, as far as I know. In fact Bracket (mathematics) provides most of this.—DIV(128.250.80.15 (talk) 06:29, 12 January 2009 (UTC)) —DIV (128.250.80.15 (talk) 06:19, 12 January 2009 (UTC))

Symbol font
Another alternative: The symbol font that comes standard with Microsoft systems renders á and ñ like angle brackets. Not sure how to implement this — I thought áñ would work, but apparently not.
 * áñ

—DIV (128.250.80.15 (talk) 06:45, 12 January 2009 (UTC))

Semantic brackets 〚·〛
Does anyone have knowledge about semantic brackets? Where do they come from? Who coined the expression?

In computer science, the “semantic brackets” are often used to map an expression to its semantics. A definition for conditional expressions might look something like the following:

〚 x ? y : z〛 = if 〚x〛 is 'true', return 〚y〛, else return 〚z〛 Sometimes this is extended with information that comes from an environment. The following example assumes an environment Γ that stores variable bindings.

〚 let x = e1 in e2 〛_Γ = 〚 e2 〛_(Γ+{x → 〚e1〛_Γ})

This states that evaluating a let-expression that binds variable 'x' to the outcome of extended 'e1', and uses this variable in expression 'e2', evaluates to the same value, as evaluating 'e2' in an environment that is enriched with the corresponding variable binging.

—91.23.229.229 (talk) 17:56, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

table of contents doesn't work
Title 3.1.3 doesn't work, it's not a hyperlink to the corresponding section as it should be.

The funny thing is, this is clearly because "{" (curly bracket) is among the forbidden characters of wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_%28technical_restrictions%29#Forbidden_characters The advice on the above page seems to have been followed (write "bracket" in the redirection), however here it doesn't work.

I'm not an expert on the subject (subject here being wikipedia syntax), so I would invite anyone who knows how to do so to correct this broken link.

Just my 2 cents. Jrob kiwi (talk) 15:46, 5 October 2010 (UTC) JRob kiwi


 * It works fine for me. It might be a browser issue, which one are you using? I'm using google chrome.--Salix (talk): 17:04, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

angle brackets 2010
The SIL choice of angle brackets, 〈〉, seem to work if formatted. — kwami (talk) 23:55, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * unformatted: o〈o〉o
 * unicoded: o〈o〉o
 * IPA'd:
 * Not sure if we should be changing the unicode character for the brackets List_of_Unicode_characters has U+27E8 ⟨ Mathematical left angle bracket, U+27E9 ⟩ Mathematical right angle bracket.
 * Indeed 2329, 232A are depricated

Deprecated angle brackets These characters are deprecated and are strongly discouraged for mathematical use because of their canonical equivalence to CJK punctuation.
 * 2329 〈 LEFT-POINTING ANGLE BRACKET
 * 232A 〉RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE BRACKET


 * --Salix (talk): 00:18, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Parentheses don't represent multiplication
The article states that:

Parentheses can also represent multiplication, as in the instance of 2(3) = 6.

Is there a source for this? I ask because it is a common misconception that parentheses represent multiplication in algebraic notation. They don't.

In the example 2(3) = 6 it is the juxtaposition of the symbols 2 and (3) that represents multiplication, not the parentheses. This is similar to the multiplication by juxtaposition represented in expressions like 3x, xy, and (x + 1)(x - 2).

A simple example shows that parentheses do not in themselves represent multiplication in algebraic notation. In the expression (3) - 1, if parentheses were to represent multiplication, the value would be the same as 3 × -1 = -3. But that is not the value of the expression. It is equal to 2.

Of course the reason why parentheses are used in expressions like 2(3) is that, without the parentheses, an attempt to represent multiplication by juxtaposition (as 23) would be superseded by the conventions of writing decimal numbers: "twenty three."

I am a new-comer to Wikipedia editing (although not to mathematics) What is the etiquette? Do I just go ahead and remove the above (inaccurate) claim from the article? OperaJoeGreen (talk) 09:39, 21 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I deleted the part, although it might deserve mention as a means to disambiguate. Wikipedia's guideline fot this is be bold, so by any means go ahead and feel free to modify an article. Faenglor (talk) 12:47, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Juxtaposition represents multiplication for letters (variables) in algebra, but not for numbers because juxtaposition of numbers represents place value. I suppose it's a matter of opinion whether the parentheses "represent" or "distinguish" or "disambiguate".  Perhaps just an example of how they are used in practice would suffice?    D b f i r s   14:23, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It's really not a matter of opinion as the rules are well-defined, though it is important to frame the question in the right context. I think it's perhaps more accurate to speak not of numbers (or the digits that form them) and variables but of terms, which really gets to the heart of the matter. Juxtaposition of terms always represents multiplication. Parentheses are used to delimit terms when necessary, for the purpose of disambiguation. Otherwise (as you point out) the juxtaposition of two 3-digit numerical values would be nonsensical, as it would be indistinguishable from one 6-digit numerical value. FeRD_NYC (talk) 13:18, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Square brackets with quills?
There is an additional pair of special brackets at code points U+2045 and U+2046. The description only identifies them as "square bracket[s] with quill" and their articles redirect to this one. Does anybody know what they are meant to be used for? -- 78.35.115.245 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:21, 14 March 2011 (UTC).

follows MOS?
I just noticed that xkcd mentioned this article and a rather amusing paragraph here. I don't like to be the bad guy here, but does anyone think that this should be fixed? I doubt that integrating examples directly into the content is allowed by the MoS... Maybe we could rewrite the sentence and keep the original one, except mark it as an example. Manish Earth Talk • Stalk 14:52, 8 March 2011 (UTC)


 * A quick look through the MoS doesn't reveal any such explicit policy, although perhaps a related document has something. (OTOH, the MoS itself uses examples integrated into the content - not that it's meant to be an example of style itself.) I'd vote for keeping it, even if a strict reading of the guidelines turns up such a policy. Scott Lawrence (talk) 01:42, 9 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, keep it. Just because this is an explanation to use brackets doesn't mean that they shouldn't be used. Look at the article about comma, there are a few hundred examples integrated into the text... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.50.58.118 (talk) 06:13, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Well yeah, of course using the english language  in the article about the english language should be banned ?

No the real offense is that stuff in brackets should not contain the main message. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.92.35.71 (talk) 13:57, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Problem with table of contents
I am not sure what the issue is but the "square brackets" entry in the table of contents does not allow clicking.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   22:35, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * OK with me (Win XP + FF5). -DePiep (talk) 22:44, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
 * ... and with me (Vista + Opera).   D b f i r s   06:18, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Removal of parentheses
An IP revomed a large section of material about parantheses. I've resoted the material primarially as it also discussed uses in mathematics and computing where the strict linguistic niceties don't really apply. The reason for the deletion may be cultural, the article states "In American usage, parentheses are usually considered separate from other brackets, and calling them "brackets" at all is unusual even though they serve a similar function." and the IP has been strict about this distinction which does not reflect the different view of Brits. --Salix (talk): 14:31, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

History
This article is very short on history - can anybody suggest any soruces which could be used to beef it up? Railwayfan2005 (talk) 14:32, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Curly Brackets/Braces
The section Bracket has the text "...when it is necessary to avoid any possibility of confusion, such as in computer programming, it may be best to use the term curly bracket rather than brace. However, general usage in North American English favours the latter form." This sounds a bit bias basically "You should say 'a' even though North American English says 'b'. Googling both yields about an even split ("Curly Brace" wins slightly over "Curly Bracket" but "Curly Brackets" wins slightly over "Curly Braces".  Adding up the results make the two essentially even.)  They seem to be both perfectly valid terms with different sects of English using different terms dominantly, which happens all the time. The text should be rewritten to sound better and more neutral in this regard. ~David Craft (talk) 17:46, 27 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree – What do you propose as the re-worded text? — Senator2029  &#124;  talk  12:35, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

In forty years living in the UK, reading widely, and achieving an honours degree in English, I have never heard curly brackets referred to as 'squiggly.' Unless a citation can be provided, that text should be removed as misleading. Leegee23 (talk) 08:38, 6 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Agreed. "Curly brackets" is in common usage in British education, but I've never heard "squiggly" used to describe the shape except possibly by a child as a joke.    D b f i r s   20:22, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

U.S. bias?
How come U.S. usage is mentioned specifically in the lead but not any other country? 109.149.142.188 (talk) 16:46, 13 November 2011 (UTC)
 * No, not bias. We need to explain that Americans use the English language slightly differently from the rest of the English-speaking world.    D b f i r s   20:26, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Parentheses are simply called 'brackets' in British English, for example. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.181.99.79 (talk) 14:38, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * They have simply been called "Parentheses" since they were invented by the ancient Greeks. They are so called in French and Spanish and most other languages, and as far as I can tell only called by the crude Saxon ananolgy "brackets" by the British relatively recently. Chrisrus (talk) 15:10, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's all Greek to us on this side of the pond, but I think the actual Ancient Greek was παρένθεσις (parenthesis), and the plural was used more recently for the type of brackets normally used to indicate the extra bit "put in beside".   D b f i r s   17:10, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I hadn't thought that Brits might not be aware of that: the singular is "parenthesis" and the plural is "parentheses", regardless of meaning or usage. So yes, keep that in mind because if someone does that wrong you might want to fix it.  But so far as this thread goes, yes, it's written from a UK point of view, but even though UK is a minority dialect, it's not a problem for the article to be written this way as long as it informs as it does of the original and majority way. Chrisrus (talk) 22:17, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm so glad that you're happy with the article!   D b f i r s   00:37, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

What to do with a/an?
I tried to do some research just now but was unable to find a consensus on what to do with a/an in a case involving brackets, where the word inside the bracket starts with a vowel sound and the word outside with a consonant (or vice versa). For example, the sentence "She has taken up a/an (unusual) hobby". The sentence sounds better with an 'an', but only if the bit in brackets is there, which goes against the rules of bracket usage. Does anybody know/know how to find the answer? I have also added this point to the page on English articles. Dragongirlhellfire (talk) 13:46, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

〖 and 〗 (lenticular brackets)
Hi,

〖 and 〗 used to redirect here, but were deleted (because there was no content). Is there an article somewhere else on those special characters? (Or could they be added to this one?) I am curious about them, but the search engine refuses to show any results.

They are also known as: (%E3%80%96 and %E3%80%97) (U+3010 and U+3011) (character 12304 and character 12305)

One use I found was that Microsoft word 2010 Equation Editor denotes 101000 as  instead of. This, however, is not notable in itself.

 •ː•   3ICE   •ː•   14:02, 9 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Huh. That's interesting. Lenticular bracket.  Never heard of them.  And neither has Wikipedia, I guess, because that link showed red on preview.  It should really link here, don't you?  But there's nothing about them here.  Do you have a WP:RS we could use to fix that? Chrisrus (talk) 00:33, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I was wrong. As it turns out, Wikipedia does know about "lenticular brackets" they are mentioned in the article Japanese punctuation, although it doesn't seem to say what they're for.  I Googled around a bit and came up with more about Japanese punctuation on the one hand, and lots of computer code instructions as to how to get them to appear in different programs.  But nothing about why or how to use them in English.  How did you come to know about them?  What do you know about them apart from what you've already told us?  Right now, it seems that the only ones who use them are the Japanese. Maybe we should redirect the red link above to Japanese punctuation.  Chrisrus (talk) 00:50, 19 December 2011 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, the use of Lenticular brackets in Japanese is very rare. About the only time you'll see them is in a grammar dictionaries to note qualifiers for terms. The tortoise shell brackets and double square brackets are used in the same way. If you look at Japanese language you'll see some regular brackets in use. Had this been on the Japanese Wikipedia they would be using tortoise shell and/or lenticular brackets depending on how much emphasis they wanted to put on something. The tortoise shells also come up in much the same way we use (parentheses) but to indicate more emphasis than parenthetical notation. If you look at the 日本語 which is the article on the Japanese language the The tortoise shells are used a few times as parentheses and lenticular bracket was used used once in the references and that was only because this site used them in the page title to help make an the English part of the title stand out.


 * These are all obscure brackets that someone could document for completeness but are not in every day use other than the corner and standard tortoise shell brackets.
 * U+3008/U+3009 &#x3008;&#x3009; Angle bracket
 * U+300A/U+300B &#x300a;&#x300b; Double angle bracket
 * U+300C/U+300D &#x300c;&#x300d; Corner bracket (these are very common in Japanese)
 * U+300E/U+300F &#x300e;&#x300f; White corner bracket
 * U+3010/U+3011 &#x3010;&#x3011; Black lenticular bracket
 * U+3014/U+3015 &#x3014;&#x3015; Tortoise shell bracket (these are used like parentheses in Japanese)
 * U+3016/U+3017 &#x3016;&#x3017; White lenticular bracket
 * U+3018/U+3019 &#x3018;&#x3019; White tortoise shell bracket
 * U+301A/U+301B &#x301a;&#x301b; White square bracket
 * I'm ambivalent on if we we should not document these on this article. The entire set is intended to support part of the Unicode CJK characters which are intended to support Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Another issue is I'm not sure if they will display for everyone. I have Asian language support enabled on my computer and will need to see how the list above looks on a machine that only supports US/UK English. You'll also see that they have extra white space on out outside compared to the brackets we use in English. --Marc Kupper&#124;talk 10:19, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Replacing Angle Brackets
I understand that there has been a LONG debate over using the Unicode mathematical angle brackets ⟨example⟩. The fact remains that these are 1. mathematical in nature and 2. not displayable by default on most computers and mobile devices. Now, hear me out. I argue that U+2329 and U+232A are more suitable for IPA transcription. Do what you want with your mathematics pages. That's fine. In fact, in that case you'd have a reason to use mathematical brackets ⟨example⟩, but I've noticed that on EVERY page that uses IPA transcription, someone has gone and replaced the typical less-than and greater-than signs with mathematical symbols. IPA DOES NOT USE MATHEMATICAL BRACKETS. If they are to be changed at all, then U-2329 and U+232A should be used. I suspect that some math guy or girl who happens to be a stickler for precision tried to edit all Wikipedia pages containing as brackets, and in doing so broke the IPA transcription for everyone else. Note that the mathematical brackets do not show up on most computers by default. Even with Code2000 installed, I can't see them. Add that to the fact that I can't install new fonts on my mobile device, and you've succeeded in alienating people from Wikipedia by making articles a headache to read. This is an instance where imprecision is a reasonable "kludge" to allow all users to view the website without trouble. In any case, IPA articles like this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin-script_digraphs are now plagued by boxes and question marks □example□ or ?example? where one should see, 〈example〉, or ‹example› Trust me, it is a chore to read □a□ and □b□ and □c□ all the time. Even in the Help:IPA article, you can see "True angle brackets, ⟨ ⟩, are unsupported by several common fonts, and so have been replaced by ‹ › or < > in most Wikipedia articles." . I vote for 〈example〉 or on non-mathematical pages. You math fanatics can duke out your own issues with angle brackets, but we linguists have consistently and happily used despite it being a "kludge". 〈example〉 would be a safe alternative, but the mathematical brackets are just. plain. wrong. I'd like some assistance and direction in how to replace all of those ugly boxes with proper IPA brackets. Kraslev (talk) 10:08, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Clarify what is common usage
Can I suggest that the people who maintain this page clarify what is common usage vs. what is archaic/extremely localised/deprecated, etc.

For example, curly brackets are claimed as also being squirrelly brackets/Scottish brackets/French brackets. A Google search with quotes around them turns up 2000 to 5000 hits for those terms, most of those hits probably coming from direct copies of the wikipedia entry! It might be worth cleaning up the list somewhat! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.29.18.129 (talk) 12:07, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Usage of double brackets
Should not the section on double brackets inform people about the usage of double brackets in Wikipedia - i.e. to indicate Wikilinks? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 18:29, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Open / Close Wakka
I can't seem to find any references via Google but I took a perl class in the late 90's where they referred to < as left-wakka and > as right-wakka, due to the fact they look like Pac-Man mouths. I didn't add do to lack of citation, perhaps someone else knows? I still use this term. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.134.139.74 (talk) 16:28, 9 May 2013 (UTC)


 * The descriptions are just amusing inventions by your Perl teacher, I think. If the terms ever had a wider usage, then it didn't catch on.  It's rather like "zig" for "/" and "zag" for "\" that I use.  They were suggested by the nine-year-old son of a contributor to John Peels Saturday morning radio programme Home Truths about ten years ago.  I was disappointed that they never caught on for wider usage.  The alternatives are much inferior (IMO).    D b f i r s   19:01, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Split Suggestion
I would like to suggest splitting this article into each of the different types of brackets and make this a disambiguation page because it is to long. NickGibson3900 (Talk - Cont.) 11:44, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

Computer languages
The discussion on use of brackets in computer languages would be highly misleading to someone who didn't already know about the subject. It should be either (a) more complete, or (b) more obviously nothing more than a random survey of examples. Wording like "... are used to..." makes it sound like these are universal, and especially common, uses of brackets.

In the case of function arguments, this is true. But using parens to bound lists is pretty much restricted to the Lisp family, while many other languages use brackets for the same purpose (and braces for associative arrays). Square brackets are no more ubiquitous in regexps than parens or braces (and similarly for shell patterns). Brackets may not be as common as braces for blocks (the Smalltalk family vs. the C family), but they're not negligible.

And the most common use of parentheses in computer languages is completely ignored--grouping subexpressions: "(2 + 3) * 4", "ASSERT((foo(qux)))", "(1, 2), 3", the parens around test expressions in C control statements, etc.

Also, some languages use other symbols essentially as brackets, with the same character serving as "left" and "right" (see "| i |" in Smalltalk, similar to "|2|" in math).

And it's a little strange to not even mention how braces are used in CSS, and then use CSS braces as an example a few lines later.

Finally, it's strange that a handful of these uses appear in the general discussion above. For example, under "Types of brackets": "In computer programming, curly brackets sometimes denote the beginning and ending of a sequence of statements or define a scope." Falcotron 07:02 & :03, 15 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The "Greater Than" bracket (>) is often used to separate menu choices in describing Windows (and other GUI) commands; e.g.: "File > New" Kortoso (talk) 21:48, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Weird signs
Instead of angle brackets i see some weird signs, so here's a test, ill write both angle brackets, please tell if you see them properly or not: < >

im using ff24, with auto detect ch. encoding (here UTF8) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slotrooper (talk • contribs) 21:09, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I see them as normal angle brackets (strictly less-than sign & greater-than sign), as in the article. It sounds as if your browser is displaying something odd.  Have you tried a different browser? Do you see these  ⟨ ⟩ correctly?  See Talk:Bracket/Archive 1   D b f i r s   07:24, 19 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm seeing this issue as well. The angle brackets all show as boxes. I'm on Chrome 64 on Windows 8.1, no unusual language settings (us-en). I think an article about types of characters that doesn't actually show the characters is kind of useless. 38.117.157.88 (talk) 14:34, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Confusing
In the section Parentheses, the line of text Parentheses have historically been used where the dash is currently used—that is, in order to depict alternatives, such as "parenthesis)(parentheses". is confusing (to say the least). A dash "-" is not used to indicate alternatives; that's a slash "/"

And does the text mean that if I wanted to say "either/or," I could also write it thus? either)(or

I'd be most surprised to discover this; I was raised by a teacher of English, and neither there nor in any of the books I've ever read have I encountered this convention. Methinks either a rewrite or a citation would be needed.

* Septegram * Talk * Contributions * 15:51, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

History
I came to this article hoping to find out at what date the earliest known usage of brackets occurred in literature. Anyone who edits this might want to consider adding this information. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.218.155.108 (talk) 09:36, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Indian terms
The terms
 * first bracket
 * second bracket [ ]
 * third bracket { }

are commonly used to teach mathematics in India. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RedBookCamel (talk • contribs) 12:20, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you have a reliable source for this? A quick Web search doesn't find anything. --Macrakis (talk) 13:01, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
 * it is used in common parlance in mathematics classes in india, to ease the way problems are solved. there is a quora question, where it is asked why first brackets and second brackets aren't used in programming, but third brackets - { }, are used. https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-we-use-first-or-second-bracket-in-C-programming — Preceding unsigned comment added by RedBookCamel (talk • contribs) 12:41, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Not a Reliable Source, I'm afraid. --Macrakis (talk) 03:28, 15 September 2016 (UTC)