Talk:Bracket

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Crystallography

Crystallography uses these things to denote whether a plane or direction is being discussed, and whether it's generic or specific. I have put up a basic account of their use in Crystallography#Notation, but you may want to wait a few days for it to stabilize before you copy it into this article. This may also convince someone to finally flesh out Miller index.--Joel 06:14 & :18, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Usage in chat

On chatrooms and message boards, actions are put in brackets.

"I know she can't sing, but I like Lindsay Lohan {ducks from flying vegetables}."

There's also the "Insert Item" usage.

"I don't care if [insert nominee here] deserves to be in the hall of fame, I think that Maris should be in."

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.188.172.165 (talk) 05:33 & :34, 6 November 2006

Lack of mention of multi-line brackets, although several examples use them?

Unicode has codepoints 239B to 23AD for brackets (parentheses, curly braces) spanning multiple lines. For example:

239B ⎛ Left Parenthesis Upper Hook

239C ⎜ Left Parenthesis Extension

239D ⎝ Left Parenthesis Lower Hook

All three examples of "Uses of { }" actually show curly braces spanning multiple lines, and two of them even seem to use these characters (I just checked, and this is indeed the case: "⎱" is U+23B1.) Yet there is no mention of these Unicode codepoints. This seems strange? 5.186.55.135 (talk) 19:43, 22 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Top table replacement

I spent a bit laying this out, does it seem at all viable?

Brackets
( )	[ ]
brackets (BrE)	square brackets (BrE)
round brackets (BrE)	brackets (AmE)
parentheses (AmE)
{ }	⟨ ⟩
braces	angle brackets
curly braces	chevrons
curly brackets (BrE)

Remsense ‥ 论 02:53, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@JMF (or whoever it may concern), does this have any sort of appeal? Remsense ‥ 论 22:09, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Apart from the heavy line under the symbols row, looks good to me. Even with that line, it is better than the current mess. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 23:25, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

are you partial to the glyphs being rendered in serif? Remsense ‥ 论 00:06, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@JMF what do you think now? Remsense ‥ 论 01:23, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

yes, better.

But just to be awkward, maybe a heavier line above the second row of symbols? (to clarify that Parentheses (AmE) is annotating the symbol above). Same density as the surrounding box?

Serif is certainly better for detail (as in apostrophe v prime distinction) but "house style" is sans. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 07:49, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Don't forget to check dark mode. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 07:52, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Curly brace

I've always referred to {} as "curly braces", because that's what they called them in programming classes. Doing a cursory google search, it seems I'm not alone, and Merriam Webster even has it right next to "curly bracket" in their dictionary. Despite this, this terminology is strangely absent from this page. American, btw.
— SirYodaJedi (talk) 21:55, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree that this seems to be an obvious omission. I'm lso from the US and a computer programmer (retired). I've always heard them called "curly braces". A quick internet search supports that usage, but does not turn up anything about regional variations i.e. whether this phrase is an Americanism or more broadly used.

I think that the Webster cite is sufficient to add the term to the article; I'm not sure what to do about the US vs BE material. I've never heard "curly brackets" that I can remember, but that's not sufficient to base article material on. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 23:27, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The current version of the article says:

{ and } are curly brackets or braces in both American and British English.

Whether that includes curly braces or not is subject to interpretation. I don't have access to the two cited sources, so I can't determine whether the term curly braces should be included, or whether this term is a US thing.

Seems that this section of the article could use some clarification, but I'm not sure how to do it. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 23:38, 6 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be adding curly braces with my oncoming changes, it's trivial to cite in dictionaries etc. Remsense ‥ 论 01:22, 7 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]