Brackets are punctuation marks used in pairs to set apart or interject text within other text. Guillemets ( or after French) also called Angle quotes, are line segments pointed as if arrows ( « or ») sometimes forming a complementary A hyphen ( -) is a Punctuation mark It is used for both Words to join and to separate Syllables It is often confused with the dashes The question mark (? also known as an interrogation point, question point, query, or eroteme, is a punctuation mark that replaces Quotation marks or inverted commas (informally referred to as quotes and speech marks) are Punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech A semicolon (   ) is a conventional Punctuation mark with several usages The slash ( /) is a punctuation mark It is also called a virgule, diagonal, stroke, forward slash, oblique dash, The solidus ( ⁄) is a punctuation mark that is not found on standard keyboards Interword separation is the act and the effect of mutually separating the written representations of Words The early Semitic languages mdashwhich had no vowel In writing a space () is a blank area that is devoid of content which separates words letters numbers and punctuation An interpunct ( ·) is a small dot used for Interword separation in ancient Latin script, being perhaps the first consistent visual representation of word boundaries Typography is the art and techniques of arranging type, Type design, and modifying type Glyphs Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety An ampersand ( &) also commonly called an " 'and' sign," is a Logogram representing the conjunction "and" The typographic character @, the at sign, denotes a pan-lingual abbreviation of the word 'at' An asterisk ( *) (Latin asteriscum "little star" from Greek ἀστερίσκος) is a Typographical symbol or Glyph The backslash ( \) is a typographical mark ( Glyph) used chiefly in Computing. In Typography, a bullet is a typographical symbol or Glyph used to introduce Items in a list, like below also known as the point of a bullet Caret is the name for the symbol ^ in ASCII and some other Character sets Its Unicode code point is U+005E and its ASCII code in hexadecimal is 5E The currency sign ( ¤) is a character used to denote a currency when the symbol for a particular currency is unavailable In many national currencies, the cent is a monetary unit that equals 1/100 of the basic monetary unit The euro sign (€ is the Currency sign used for the Euro, the official currency of the European Union (EU See also Pound (currency.The pound sign (" £ " or " ₤ " is the symbol for the Pound sterling —the currency of the ¥￥ ₪The sheqel sign ( ₪) A dagger ( †, &dagger U+ 2020 is a typographical symbol or Glyph. The degree symbol (° Unicode: U+00B0 HTML: &deg is a typographical symbol or Glyph, that is used to represent degrees of arc (see The inverted question and exclamation marks are used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences respectively in written Spanish. The inverted question and exclamation marks are used to begin interrogative and exclamatory sentences respectively in written Spanish. In Logic and Mathematics, negation or not is an operation on Logical values for example the logical value of a Proposition Number sign is a name for the symbol #; it is the preferred Unicode name for the Code point associated with that Glyph. The Numero sign (U+2116 or Number sign is used in many languages to indicate ordinal numeration especially in names and titles for example instead of writing the long " The percent sign ( %) is the symbol used to indicate a Percentage (that the preceding number is divided by one hundred The pilcrow (¶ Unicode U+00B6 HTML entity &para also called the Paragraph sign or the alinea ( The prime symbol ( ′  double prime symbol ( &Prime  triple prime symbol ( ‴  etc The section sign (§ Unicode U+00A7 HTML entity &sect is a typographical character used mainly to refer to a particular section The tilde (~ (/ˈtɪldə/ is a Grapheme with several uses The name of the character comes from Spanish, from the Latin titulus Diaeresis or trema See also Diaeresis History Historically the diaeresis mark or trema is far older than the umlaut mark The underscore _ (also called understrike, underbar, low line, or low dash is a character that originally appeared on the Typewriter. Note "broken bar" and the glyph "¦" redirect here Typography is the art and techniques of arranging type, Type design, and modifying type Glyphs Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety For other uses of this term please refer to Asterism disambiguation page The symbol ☞ is a Punctuation mark called an index or fist. In a Mathematical proof, the therefore sign (∴ is a symbol that is sometimes placed before a Logical consequence, such as the conclusion of a The interrobang ( ‽, is a nonstandard English -language Punctuation mark intended to combine the functions of the Question mark (also "؟" redirects here For the Arabic question mark see Question mark. This page lists Japanese typographic symbols which are not included in Kana or Kanji. A sarcasm mark or sarcasm point identifies text as being Derogatory or ironic. In computer science, the term is sometimes said to strictly apply to the square or box type. Computer science (or computing science) is the study and the Science of the theoretical foundations of Information and Computation and their ^[1]

There are four main types of brackets:

• round brackets or parentheses:  ( )
• square brackets or box brackets:  [ ]
• curly brackets or braces:  { }
• angle brackets or chevrons:  < > or ⟨ ⟩

All these forms may be used according to typographical conventions that may vary from publication to publication and may vary even more from language to language. Typography is the art and techniques of arranging type, Type design, and modifying type Glyphs Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety Some typical uses in English texts follow.

History

The angle bracket was the earliest type to appear in English. Desiderius Erasmus coined the term lunula to refer to the rounded parentheses (), recalling the round shape of the moon. ^[2]

Usage

In addition to referring to the class of all types of brackets the unqualified word bracket is most commonly used to refer to a specific type of bracket. In modern American usage this is usually the square bracket whereas in modern British usage it is usually the parenthesis (round bracket).

In American usage parentheses are usually considered separately from other brackets, and calling them “brackets” at all is unusual even though they serve a similar function. In more formal usage “parenthesis” may refer to the entire bracketed text, not just to the punctuation marks used (so all the text in this set of round brackets may be said to be a parenthesis). In Rhetoric, a parenthesis (plural parentheses; from the Greek word παρένθεσις which comes in turn from words meaning "alongside of" In Rhetoric, a parenthesis (plural parentheses; from the Greek word παρένθεσις which comes in turn from words meaning "alongside of"

Types

Parentheses ( )

Parentheses (singular parenthesis)—sometimes called round brackets, curved brackets, oval brackets, or just brackets; or, colloquially, parens, or fingernails— contain material that could be omitted without destroying or altering the meaning of a sentence.

Parentheses may be used in formal writing to add supplementary information, such as “Sen. Edward Kennedy (D. , Massachusetts) spoke at length. ” They can also indicate shorthand for “either singular or plural” for nouns—e. g. , “the claim(s)”.

Parenthetical phrases have been used extensively in informal writing and stream of consciousness literature. Of particular note is the southern American author William Faulkner (see Absalom, Absalom! and the Quentin section of The Sound and the Fury). William Faulkner (born William Cuthbert Falkner) ( September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American Author Absalom Absalom! is a Southern Gothic Novel by the American author William Faulkner, published in 1936 The Sound and the Fury is one of the most celebrated novels of the Twentieth century, written by American author William Faulkner, which makes use In most writing overuse of parentheses is usually a sign of a badly structured text. A milder effect may be obtained by using a pair of commas as the delimiter. A delimiter is a sequence of one or more characters used to specify the boundary between separate independent regions in Plain text or other data stream If the sentence contains commas for other purposes visual confusion may result.

Parentheses have historically been used where the dash is currently used—that is, in order to depict alternatives, such as “parenthesis)(parentheses”. A dash is a Punctuation mark It is longer than a Hyphen and is used differently Examples of this usage can be seen in editions of Fowler’s. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, often referred to as Fowler's Modern English Usage or simply as Fowler's or Fowler

Parentheses may also be nested (with one set (such as this) inside another set). This is not commonly used in formal writing (though sometimes other brackets [especially square brackets] will be used for one or more inner set of parentheses [in other words, secondary {or even tertiary} phrases can be found within the main sentence]).

Any punctuation inside parentheses or other brackets is independent of the rest of the text: “Mrs. Pennyfarthing (What? Yes, that was her name!) was my landlady. ” In this usage the explanatory text in the parentheses is a parenthesis. In Rhetoric, a parenthesis (plural parentheses; from the Greek word παρένθεσις which comes in turn from words meaning "alongside of" (It is most common for the parenthesized text to be within a single sentence but also common for an entire sentence, or even several sentences, of supplemental material to be in parenthesis. In this case even the final full stop would be within the parentheses. A full stop or period (sometimes stop, full point, decimal point, or dot) is the Punctuation mark commonly placed at the Again, the parenthesis implies that the meaning and flow of the text as a whole would be unchanged were the parenthesized sentences removed. )

Parentheses in mathematics signify a different precedence of operators. Mathematics is the body of Knowledge and Academic discipline that studies such concepts as Quantity, Structure, Space and In Algebra and Computer programming, when a number or expression is both preceded and followed by a Binary operation, a rule is required for which operation 2 + 3 × 4 would be 14, for example, since the multiplication is done before the addition. (2 + 3) × 4 is 20, on the other hand, because the parentheses override normal precedence, causing the addition to be done first. They are also used to set apart the arguments in mathematical functions. In Mathematics, Statistics, and the mathematical Sciences a parameter ( G auxiliary measure) is a quantity that defines certain characteristics The Mathematical concept of a function expresses dependence between two quantities one of which is given (the independent variable, argument of the function f(x), for example, is the function f applied to the variable x. A variable (ˈvɛərɪəbl is an Attribute of a physical or an abstract System which may change its Value while it is under Observation. Parentheses denote a set of coordinates in the coordinate system. In Mathematics and its applications a coordinate system is a system for assigning an n - Tuple of Numbers or scalars to each point (4,7), for example, may represent the point located at 4 on the x-axis and 7 on the y-axis. Parentheses may also represent intervals. In Mathematics, an interval is a set of Real numbers with the property that any number that lies between two numbers in the set is also included in the set (0,5), for example, is the interval between 0 and 5, not including 0 or 5. Parentheses can also represent multiplication, as in the instance of 2 (3) = 6. Some authors follow the convention in mathematical equations that, when parentheses have one level of nesting, the inner pair are parentheses and the outer pair are square brackets. Ex: [5−(7+3)]+4=x. Parentheses may also be used to represent a binomial coefficient. In Mathematics, the binomial coefficient \tbinom nk is the Coefficient of the x   k term in the Polynomial

Parentheses are used in computer programming, especially in the C programming language and similar languages, to pass parameters or arguments to functions or methods such as in the example below:

getAverage(2,7,5);

Box brackets or square brackets [ ]

Square brackets enclose explanatory or missing material, especially in quoted text. tags please moot on the talk page first! --> In Computing, C is a general-purpose cross-platform block structured In Computer programming, a parameter is a variable which takes on the meaning of a corresponding Argument (computer science is same article--> argument In Computer science, a subroutine ( function, method, procedure, or subprogram) is a portion of code within a larger “I appreciate it [the honor], but I must refuse”, for example. Or, “the future of psionics [see definition] is in doubt”. Psionics is the study and/or practice of using the mind to induce paranormal phenomena

The bracketed expression [sic] is used to indicate errors that are “thus in the original”; a bracketed ellipsis […] is often used to indicate deleted material; bracketed comments indicate when original text has been modified for clarity: “I’d like to thank [several unimportant people] and my parentals [sic] for their love, tolerance […] and assistance [emphasis added]”. Sic is a Latin word meaning "thus" "so" "as such" or "just as that" Ellipsis (plural ellipses; from Greek 'omission' in Printing and Writing refers to a mark or series of marks that usually indicate an intentional ^[3]

Square brackets are used in mathematics in a variety of notations, including standard notations for intervals, commutators, the Lie bracket, and the Iverson bracket. Mathematics is the body of Knowledge and Academic discipline that studies such concepts as Quantity, Structure, Space and In Mathematics, an interval is a set of Real numbers with the property that any number that lies between two numbers in the set is also included in the set In Mathematics, the commutator gives an indication of the extent to which a certain Binary operation fails to be Commutative. Lie bracket can refer to Lie algebra Lie bracket of vector fields In Mathematics, the Iverson bracket is a convenient notation that denotes a number that is 1 if the condition in square brackets is satisfied and 0 otherwise

Square brackets are also used as parentheses within parentheses (alternating between parentheses and square brackets as nesting gets deeper [despite the alternative use of curly braces for this purpose (as mentioned earlier)]).

In the International Phonetic Alphabet square brackets indicate a phonetic transcription (as opposed to a phonemic one). The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Phonetics (from the Greek φωνή ( phonê) "sound" or "voice" is the study of the physical sounds of human speech The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU

Square brackets can also be used in chemistry to represent the concentration of a chemical substance or to denote a complex ion. Chemistry (from Egyptian kēme (chem meaning "earth") is the Science concerned with the composition structure and properties In Chemistry, concentration is the measure of how much of a given substance there is mixed with another substance A chemical substance is a Material with a definite chemical composition. The term complex in Chemistry is usually used to describe molecules or ensembles formed by the combination of Ligands and metal Ions.

Square brackets can be used in computer programming to access array elements, especially in C-like languages. In Computer science an array is a Data structure consisting of a group of elements that are accessed by indexing. tags please moot on the talk page first! --> In Computing, C is a general-purpose cross-platform block structured They are used In programming manuals to denote missing or optional parameters.

They can be used in architecture to emphasize cool words such as [metaliving] or [cityscape]. The term architecture (from Greek αρχιτεκτονικήarchitektoniki) can be used to mean a process a profession or documentation Cool is an Aesthetic of attitude behavior comportment appearance style and Zeitgeist.

Square brackets (called move-left symbols or move right symbols) are added to the sides of text in proofreading to indicate changes in indentation:

Move left	[To Fate I sue, of other means bereft, the only refuge for the wretched left. Proofreading traditionally means reading a proof copy of a text in order to detect and correct any errors
Center	]Paradise Lost[
Move up

Square brackets are used to denote parts of the text that need to be checked when preparing drafts prior to finalizing a document. They often denote points that have not yet been agreed to in legal drafts and the year in which a report was made for certain case law decisions. Case law' (also known as decisional law or judicial precedent) is that body of reported Judicial opinions in countries that have Common law

The html entities for the square brackets are &#91; and &#93;

From the top: square brackets, curly braces, parentheses, angle brackets, and (in red) inequality signs

Curly brackets or braces { }

Curly brackets (also called braces) are sometimes used in prose to indicate a series of equal choices: “Select your animal {goat, sheep, cow, horse} and follow me”. HTML has been in use since 1991, but HTML 40 (December 1997 was the first standardized version where international characters were given reasonably complete treatment They are used in specialized ways in poetry and music (to mark repeats or joined lines). The musical terms for this mark joining staves are “accolade” and “brace. ” In mathematics they delimit sets. Mathematics is the body of Knowledge and Academic discipline that studies such concepts as Quantity, Structure, Space and In many programming languages, they enclose groups of statements. Curly brace or bracket Programming languages are those which use Balanced Brackets ( { and }, also known as "squiggly In Computer programming a statement can be thought of as the smallest standalone element of an imperative Programming language. Such languages are therefore called curly bracket languages. Curly brace or bracket Programming languages are those which use Balanced Brackets ( { and }, also known as "squiggly

Presumably due to the similarity of the words brace and bracket (although they do not share an etymology), many people casually treat brace as a synonym for bracket. Etymology is the study of the History of Words &mdash when they entered a language from what source and how their form and meaning have changed over time This article deals with the general meaning of the term "synonym" Therefore, 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. The term curly braces is redundant since no other type of brace exists. Indian programmers often use the name “flower bracket”.

Curly brackets are often used in internet communities and through instant messaging to indicate hugging. ^[4]

Angle brackets or chevrons 〈 〉

Angle brackets (⟨ ⟩^[5]; Unicode U+27E8 and U+27E9; and others, see below) are often used to enclose highlighted material. Some dictionaries use angle brackets to enclose short excerpts illustrating the usage of words. In physical sciences, angle brackets are used to denote an average over time or another continuous parameter. For example,

In linguistics, angle brackets indicate orthography, as in “The English word /kæt/ is spelled ⟨cat⟩. Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific Writing system to write the language ”

In textual criticism, and hence in many editions of poorly transmitted works, angle brackets denote sections of the text which are illegible or otherwise lost; the editor will often insert his own reconstruction where possible within them. Textual criticism (or lower criticism) is a branch of Literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of Transcription errors in

Angle brackets are infrequently used to denote dialogue that is thought instead of spoken, such as:

⟨What a beautiful flower!⟩

Single and double angle brackets or pairs of comparison operators (<<, >>) are sometimes used instead of guillemets («, ») (used as quotation marks in many languages) when the proper glyphs are not available. Guillemets ( or after French) also called Angle quotes, are line segments pointed as if arrows ( « or ») sometimes forming a complementary Quotation marks or inverted commas (informally referred to as quotes and speech marks) are Punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech A glyph is an element of writing Two or more glyphs representing the same symbol whether interchangeable or context-dependent are called Allographs the abstract unit they

The mathematical or logical symbols for greater-than (>) and less-than (<) are inequality operators, and are not punctuation marks when so used. In Mathematics, an inequality is a statement about the relative size or order of two objects or about whether they are the same or not (See also equality Nevertheless, since true angle brackets are not available on a typical computer keyboard, the “less than” and “greater than” symbols are often used instead. These are often loosely referred to as angle brackets when used in this way. For example, the symbols < and > are often used to set apart URLs in text, such as “I found it on Example. Uniform Resource Locator is an URI which also specifies where the identified resource is available and the protocol for retrieving it com <http://www. example. com/>”. It may also often be found to indicate an e-mail address, such as “This photo is copyrighted by John Smith <john@smith. Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving com>”, and is the computer-readable form for such in message headers as specified by RFC 2822. Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving

Chevrons are part of standard Chinese, and Korean punctuation, where they generally enclose the titles of books: ︿ and ﹀ or ︽ and ︾ for traditional vertical printing, and 〈 and 〉 or 《 and 》 for horizontal printing. This article is mainly about the spoken Korean language See Hangul for details on the native Korean writing system Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically.

In comic books, angle brackets are often used to mark dialogue that has been translated notionally from another language; in other words, if a character is speaking another language, instead of writing in the other language and providing a translation, one writes the translated text within angle brackets. A comic book (often shortened to simply comic and sometimes called a comic paper or comic magazine) is a Magazine or Book of narrative Of course, since no foreign language is actually written, this is only notionally translated.

Angle brackets can also be used to indicate an action or status (eg. <Waves> or <Offline>), particularly in online, real-time text-based discussions (instant messaging, bulletin boards, etc). (Here, asterisks can also be used to signify an action. An asterisk ( *) (Latin asteriscum "little star" from Greek ἀστερίσκος) is a Typographical symbol or Glyph )

Computing

• Opening and closing parentheses correspond to ASCII and Unicode characters 40 and 41, or U+0028 and U+0029, respectively. American Standard Code for Information Interchange ( ASCII) In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's For other uses see Character. In Computer and machine-based Telecommunications terminology a character is a unit of
• For square brackets corresponding values are 91 and 93, or U+005B and U+005D.
• For curly brackets, 123 and 125, or U+007B and U+007D.
• True angle brackets are available in Unicode at code points U+27E8 and U+27E9 (for mathematical use) and or U+3008 and U+3008 (for East Asian languages). A third set of angle brackets are encoded at U+2329 and U+232A, but officially "discouraged for mathematical use"^[6] because they are canonically equivalent to the CJK code points U+300x and thus likely to render as double-width symbols.
• The less-than and greater-than symbols can be found in both Unicode and ASCII at code points 60 and 62, or U+003C and U+003E.

These various bracket characters are frequently used in many computer languages as operators or for other syntax markup. The more common uses follow.

Uses of “(” and “)”

• are often used to define the syntactic structure of expressions, overriding operator precedence: a*(b+c) has subexpressions a and b+c, whereas a*b+c has subexpressions a*b and c
• contain the parameters or arguments to functions, or may denote the invocation of a function or function-like construct: substring($val,10,1)
• in Lisp they open and close s-expressions and therefore function applications: (cons a b)
• in Fortran-family languages, they are also used for array references
• in the Perl programming language, they are used to define lists, static array-like structures; this idiom is extended to their use as containers of subroutine (function) arguments
• in Python they are used to define tuples (immutable ordered lists)
• in Tcl they are used to enclose the name of an element of an associative array variable

Uses of “[” and “]”

• refer to elements of an array or associative array, and sometimes to define the number of elements in an array: queue[3]
• may be used to define a literal anonymous array or list: [5, 10, 15]
• in most regular expression syntaxes square brackets denote a character class: a set of possible characters to choose from
• in Tcl, they enclose a subscript to be evaluated and the result substituted

Uses of “{” and “}”

• are used in some programming languages to define the beginning and ending of blocks of code or data. In Programming languages, common operator notation is just one way of notating mathematical expressions as alinear sequence of tokens or Operators but this is not In Computer programming, a parameter is a variable which takes on the meaning of a corresponding Argument (computer science is same article--> argument Lisp (or LISP) is a family of Computer Programming languages with a long history and a distinctive fully parenthesized syntax The term S-expression or sexp (where S stands for symbolic refers to a convention for representing Semi-structured data in human-readable textual form Fortran (previously FORTRAN) is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative Programming language that is especially suited to NOTES FOR EDITORS "Perl" is not an acronym (read the "Name" section below Python is a general-purpose High-level programming language. Its design philosophy emphasizes programmer productivity and code readability In Mathematics, a tuple is a Sequence (also known as an "ordered list" of values called the components of the tuple In object-oriented and functional programming an immutable object is an object whose state cannot be modified after it is created Tcl (originally from "Tool Command Language" but nonetheless conventionally rendered as "Tcl" rather than "TCL" pronounced as " tickle " An associative array (also associative container, map, mapping, hash, dictionary, finite map, and in query-processing an An associative array (also associative container, map, mapping, hash, dictionary, finite map, and in query-processing an In Computing, regular expressions provide a concise and flexible means for identifying strings of text of interest such as particular characters words or patterns of characters Tcl (originally from "Tool Command Language" but nonetheless conventionally rendered as "Tcl" rather than "TCL" pronounced as " tickle " In Computer programming, a statement block (or code block) is a section of code which is grouped together much like a Paragraph; such blocks Languages which use this convention are said to belong to the curly bracket family of programming languages
• are used to represent certain type definitions or literal data values, such as a composite structure or associative array
• in math they enclose elements of a set and denote a set
• in Pascal they define the beginning and ending of comments
• in most regular expression syntaxes, they are used as quantifiers, matching n repetitions of the previous group
• in Perl they are also used to refer to elements of an associative array
• in Tcl they enclose a string to be substituted without any internal substitutions being performed
• in mIRC slang, two braces with the enclosing one first represent a kiss: }{

Uses of “<” and “>”

In computing, the less-than and greater-than symbols are sometimes used with a bracket-like function. Curly brace or bracket Programming languages are those which use Balanced Brackets ( { and }, also known as "squiggly In Computer science, composite types are Datatypes which can be constructed in a Programming language out of that language's Primitive types and Mathematics is the body of Knowledge and Academic discipline that studies such concepts as Quantity, Structure, Space and Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural Programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small In Computer programming, a comment is a Programming language construct used to embed Information in the Source code of a computer program In Computing, regular expressions provide a concise and flexible means for identifying strings of text of interest such as particular characters words or patterns of characters NOTES FOR EDITORS "Perl" is not an acronym (read the "Name" section below Tcl (originally from "Tool Command Language" but nonetheless conventionally rendered as "Tcl" rather than "TCL" pronounced as " tickle " mIRC is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC client for Microsoft Windows created in 1995 and developed by Khaled Mardam-Bey When these symbols are used in pairs as if they are brackets,

• in SGML (and its applications and variants such as HTML and XML), used to enclose code tags: <div>
• in C++, C#, and Java they delimit generic arguments and preprocessor directives
• when writing text that contains e-mail addresses or URIs they delimit the canonical address part from any surrounding textual content, especially when ambiguities may otherwise arise. The Standard Generalized Markup Language ( ISO 88791986 SGML) is an ISO Standard Metalanguage in which one can define Markup languages HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant Markup language for Web pages It provides a means to describe the structure Don't change "Extensible" C++ (" C Plus Plus " ˌsiːˌplʌsˈplʌs is a general-purpose Programming language. C# (pronounced C Sharp is a Multi-paradigm Generic programming is a style of Computer programming in which algorithms are written in terms of to-be-specified-later types that are then instantiated In Computer science, a preprocessor is a program that processes its input data to produce output that is used as input to another program An e-mail address identifies a location to which E-mail messages can be delivered
• in Perl they are used to read a line from an input source.
• in ABAP they denote field symbols - placeholders or symbolic names for other fields, which can point to any data object. ABAP ( A dvanced B usiness A pplication P rogramming originally A llgemeiner B erichts- A ufbereitungs- P rozessor

When not used in pairs to delimit text (not acting as brackets),

• the less-than and greater-than signs (possibly in combination with other punctuation marks) are common relational operators; in some languages the pair together as <> denotes an inequality comparison
• when doubled as << or >> they may represent bit shift operators, or in C++ also as stream input/output operators
• are operators for indicating the redirection of input/output in Unix and similar operating systems’ shells. In Computer science a relational operator is a Programming language construct or operator that tests some kind of relation between two entities In Mathematics, an inequality is a statement about the relative size or order of two objects or about whether they are the same or not (See also equality In Computer programming, a bitwise operation operates on one or two Bit patterns or binary numerals at the level of their individual Bits On most In Computing, input/output, or I/O, refers to the communication between an Information processing system (such as a Computer) and the outside

Layout styles

Main article: Indent style

In normal writing (prose) an opening bracket is rarely left hanging at the end of a line of text nor is a closing bracket permitted to start one. In Computer programming, an indent style is a convention governing the Indentation of blocks of code to convey the program's structure However, in computer code this is often done intentionally to aid readability. For example, a bracketed list of items separated by semicolons may be written with the brackets on separate lines, and the items, followed by the semicolon, each on one line.

For example, the CSS code

h1 { font-weight: bold; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 14pt }

may also be written

h1 {
  font-weight: bold;
  font-size: 12pt;
  line-height: 14pt
}

A common error in programming is mismatching braces; accordingly, many IDEs have braces matching to highlight matching pairs. Brace matching, or parentheses matching, is a Syntax highlighting feature of certain Text editors and Integrated development environments that

Mathematics

Main article: Bracket (mathematics)

In addition to the use of parentheses to specify the order of operations, both parentheses and square brackets are used to denote an interval. In Mathematics, various typographical forms of Brackets are frequently used in Mathematical notation such as parentheses (  square brackets, curly brackets Brackets are Punctuation marks used in pairs to set apart or interject text within other text In Algebra and Computer programming, when a number or expression is both preceded and followed by a Binary operation, a rule is required for which operation In Mathematics, an interval is a set of Real numbers with the property that any number that lies between two numbers in the set is also included in the set The notation [a, c) is used to indicate an interval from a to c that is inclusive of a but exclusive of c. That is, [5, 12) would be the set of all real numbers between 5 and 12, including 5 but not 12. The numbers may come as close as they like to 12, including 11. 999 and so forth (with any finite number of 9s), but 12. In Mathematics, a set is called finite if there is a Bijection between the set and some set of the form {1 2. 0 is not included. In Europe, the notation [5,12[ is also used for this. The endpoint adjoining the square bracket is known as closed, while the endpoint adjoining the parenthesis is known as open. If both types of brackets are the same, the entire interval may be referred to as closed or open as appropriate. Whenever infinity or negative infinity is used as an endpoint, it is normally considered open and adjoined to a parenthesis. Infinity (symbolically represented with ∞) comes from the Latin infinitas or "unboundedness See Interval (mathematics) for a more complete treatment. In Mathematics, an interval is a set of Real numbers with the property that any number that lies between two numbers in the set is also included in the set

In quantum mechanics, angle brackets are also used as part of Dirac’s formalism, bra-ket notation, to note vectors from the dual spaces of the Bra <A| and the Ket |B>. Quantum mechanics is the study of mechanical systems whose dimensions are close to the Atomic scale such as Molecules Atoms Electrons Bra-ket notation is a standard notation for describing Quantum states in the theory of Quantum mechanics composed of angle brackets (chevrons and Vertical In Mathematics, any Vector space V has a corresponding dual vector space (or just dual space for short consisting of all Linear functionals Mathematicians will also commonly write <a,b> for the inner product of two vectors. In Mathematics, an inner product space is a Vector space with the additional Structure of inner product. In statistical mechanics, angle brackets denote ensemble or time average. Angle brackets are used in group theory to write group presentations, and to denote the subgroup generated by a collection of elements. Group theory is a mathematical discipline the part of Abstract algebra that studies the Algebraic structures known as groups. In Mathematics, one method of defining a group is by a presentation. In Abstract algebra, a generating set of a group G is a Subset S such that every element of G can be expressed as the

In group theory and ring theory, square brackets denote the commutator. Group theory is a mathematical discipline the part of Abstract algebra that studies the Algebraic structures known as groups. In Mathematics, ring theory is the study of rings, Algebraic structures in which addition and multiplication are defined and have similar properties to those In Mathematics, the commutator gives an indication of the extent to which a certain Binary operation fails to be Commutative. In group theory, the commutator [g,h] is commonly defined as g⁻¹h⁻¹gh. In ring theory, the commutator [a,b] is defined as ab − ba. Furthermore, in ring theory, braces denote the anticommutator where {a,b} is defined as ab + ba. In Mathematics, the commutator gives an indication of the extent to which a certain Binary operation fails to be Commutative. The square bracket is also used to denote the Lie derivative, or more generally the Lie bracket in any Lie algebra. In Mathematics, the Lie derivative, named after Sophus Lie by Władysław Ślebodziński, evaluates the change of one Vector field along the In Mathematics, a Lie algebra is an algebraic structure whose main use is in studying geometric objects such as Lie groups and differentiable Manifolds Lie

Various notations, like the vinculum have a similar effect to brackets in specifying order of operations, or otherwise grouping several characters together for a common purpose. A vinculum is a horizontal line placed over a Mathematical expression, used to indicate that it is to be considered a group

In the Z formal specification language, curly braces define a set and angle brackets define a sequence. The Z notation (formally zɛd named after Zermelo-Fränkel set theory, is a formal Specification language used for describing and modeling computing systems A formal specification is a mathematical description of Software or Hardware that may be used to develop an Implementation.

Accounting

Traditionally in accounting, negative amounts are placed in parentheses. Accountancy or accounting is the measurement statement or provision of assurance about financial information primarily used by Lenders managers, ^[7]

Law

Brackets are used in the citation of law reports to identify parallel citations to non-official reporters. Law reports or reporters are series of books which contain judicial opinions from a selection of cases that have been decided by the courts. For example: Chronicle Pub. Co. v. Superior Court, (1998) 54 Cal. 2d 548, [7 Cal. Rptr. 109]. Likewise, when quoted material is in any way altered, the alterations are enclosed in brackets within the quotation. For example: Plaintiff asserts his cause is just, stating, “[m]y causes is [sic] just. ” While in the original quoted sentence the word “my” was capitalized, it has been modified in the quotation and the change signalled with brackets. Similarly, where the quotation contained a grammatical error, the quoting author signalled that the error was in the original with “[sic]” (Latin for “thus”). (California Style Manual, section 4:59 (4th ed. ))

Sports

Tournament brackets, the diagrammatic representation of the series of games played during a tournament usually leading to a single winner, are so named for their resemblance to square or curly brackets. A bracket is the diagrammatic representation of the series of games played during a Tournament, named as such because it appears to be a large number of interconnected (punctuational

Typing

In roleplaying, and writing, brackets are used for out-of-speech sentences(otherwise know as OOC, Out-Of-Character). In roleplaying, participants adopt and act out the Role of characters, or parts that may have personalities motivations and backgrounds different from Example

(What's your name?)

See also

• Emoticon
• Japanese typographic symbols

References

1. ^ Free Online Dictionary of Computing
2. ^ Truss, Lynne. An emoticon is a symbol or combination of symbols used to convey emotional content in written or message form This page lists Japanese typographic symbols which are not included in Kana or Kanji. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, 2003. p. 161. ISBN 1-592-40087-6.
3. ^ The Columbia Guide to Standard American English
4. ^ Messenger Emoticons See Left hug and Right hug
5. ^ Some fonts don't display these characters correctly. Please refer to the image on the right instead.
6. ^ http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U2300.pdf
7. ^ IBM Information Management Software for z/OS Solutions Information Center

Bibliography

• Bryant, Randal E. & David, O’Hallaron (2003), Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective (2003 ed. Randal E Bryant (born October 27, 1952) is an American Computer scientist and Academic noted for his research on formally verifying ), Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, pp. 794, ISBN 0-13-034074-X, <http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/> 
• Lennard, John (1991). John Lennard is Professor of British and American Literature at the University of the West Indies, Mona and a freelance academic and writer But I Digress: The Exploitation of Parentheses in English Printed Verse. ISBN 0-19-811247-5.  
• Turnbull; et al. (1964). The Graphics of Communication. New York: Holt.   States that what are depicted as square brackets above are called braces and curly brackets are called brackets. This was the terminology in US printing prior to computers.