|
:For technical reasons, :) and some similar combinations redirect here. See emoticon. Brackets are punctuation marks used in pairs to set apart or interject text within other text. With respect to computer science, the term refers to only the square or box type. * Types of brackets include parentheses or round brackets ( ), box brackets or square brackets , curly brackets or braces , and angle brackets . 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. Some typical uses in English texts follow. 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. In fact, 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. Parentheses ( ) Parentheses (the singular is parenthesis, with an i) – sometimes called round brackets, curved brackets or just brackets; or, colloquially, parens, or fingernails – are used to contain parenthetical (or optional, additional) material in a sentence that could be removed without destroying the meaning of the main text. John Lennard, in "The exploitation of parentheses in English printed verse," usefully coined the term lunula to refer specifically to the opening curved bracket, the closing curved bracket and the textual contents between. In formal writing, parentheses may be used to add supplementary information, such as "Sen. Kennedy (D., Massachusetts) spoke at length." In literature and informal writing, parenthetical phrases have been used extensively in stream of consciousness literature. Of particular note is the great southern American author William Faulkner, whose use of parenthetical constructions was legendary, effective, and (at times) frustrating. See Absalom, Absalom and the Quentin section of The Sound and the Fury for the best known examples. In most writing, overuse of parentheses is usually a sign of a badly structured text. Historically, parentheses have been used where the solidus is modernly used—that is, in order to depict alternatives, such as "parenthesis)(parentheses". Examples of this usage can be seen in editions of Fowler’s. Parentheses may also be nested (with one set inside another set (this is not commonly used in formal writing)). Sometimes square brackets will be used for the inner set of parentheses (in other words, a secondary phrase in parentheses for example, this one). Any punctuation inside parentheses or other brackets is independent from 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 mathematics, parentheses are used to signify a different precedence of operators. For example, 2 + 3 × 4 would be 14, since the multiplication is done before the addition. On the other hand, (2 + 3) × 4 is 20, because the parentheses override normal precedence, causing the addition to be done first. They are also used to set apart the arguments to mathematical functions. For example, f(x) is the function f applied to the variable x. In the coordinate system, parentheses are used to denote a set of coordinates. For example, (4,7) may represent the point located at 4 on the x-axis and 7 on the y-axis. Parentheses can also represent multiplication, as in the instance of 2 (3) = 6. Box brackets or square brackets [ ] Square brackets are used to enclose explanatory or missing … material, especially in quoted text. For example, "I appreciate it the honor, but I must refuse". Or, "the future of psionics See definition is in doubt". The bracketed expression sic (Latin for "thus") is used to indicate errors that are "thus in the original"; a bracketed ellipsis … is often used to indicate deleted material; bracketed comments are used to 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 italics added". Square brackets are also sometimes used as parentheses within parentheses (secondary parentheses as mentioned earlier). With the International Phonetic Alphabet, square brackets are used to indicate a phonetic transcription (as opposed to a phonemic one). In chemistry, square brackets can also be used to represent the concentration of a chemical substance, or to denote a complex ion. In architecture, square brackets can be used to emphasize cool words, such as metaliving or cityscape. It can also be used to make the layout generally look more cool and modern. In proofreading, square brackets (called move-left symbols or move right symbols) are added to the sides of text to indicate changes in indentation: Curly brackets or braces { } Curly brackets (so-called in British English; North American English prefers braces) are sometimes used in prose to indicate a series of equal choices: "Select your animal and follow me". They are used in specialized ways in poetry and music (to mark repeats or joined lines). In mathematics they are used to delimit sets. 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. 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". In computer programming, curly brackets sometimes denote the beginning and ending of a sequence of statements or define a scope. Curly brackets are often used in internet communities and through instant messaging to indicate hugging. Angle brackets or chevrons {{Unicode|〈}} {{Unicode|〉}} Angle brackets ( ) are often used to enclose highlighted material. Some dictionaries use angle brackets to enclose short excerpts illustrating the usage of words. True angle brackets are not available on a typical computer keyboard, so the "less than" and "greater than" symbols are 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.com Angle brackets are used in mathematics and logic to delimit ordered n-tuples. They are used in physical sciences to denote an average over time or another continuous parameter. For example, ight angle = lim_ racint_^ V(t)^2t In linguistics, angle brackets are used to indicate orthography, as in "The English word is spelled ." 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. Single and double angle brackets () or pairs of the appropriate comparison operators (<<, >>) are sometimes used instead of guillemets when the proper glyphs are not available. The mathematical or logical symbols for greater-than (>) and less-than (<), when used as such, are not punctuation marks. Chevrons are part of standard Chinese, Japanese, 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. In comic books, angle brackets are often used to mark dialogue that has notionally been translated from another language. Cheverons or Angle Brakets can also be used to indicate an action or status eg. In computing Also, in many computer languages: a has subexpressions a and b+c, whereas a has subexpressions a and c.substring($val,10,1). On the other hand, 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.queue3. | |||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |