During this week's chat, I mentioned brackets to Kalleh, and, after enumerating the common brackets and their names, mentioned the words other meanings and its etymology.

First, the names: round brackets, or parentheses, '(' and ')'), square brackets (or box brackets, '[' and ']'), curley brackets (or braces, '{' and '}'), and angle brackets ('<' and '>'). The great thing about these punctuation marks, along with the various kinds of quotation marks, is that they come in pairs and are used for delimiting text. The term parenthesis, like other punctuation marks, is rhetorical in origin. It originally refered to a parenthetical, or appositive, phrase and not punctuation marks at all. (Cf. also, the French guillomets (like sideways chevrons, '«' and '»') and the German upper and lower double commas ('„' and '‟').)

Square brackets originated in marks that were L-shaped, and resembled brackets such as though which hold up shelves. Their delimiting, or enclosing, quality lent itself to a military term where the target of artillary fire is determined by under- and over-shooting to bracket it. This term was borrowed in the early part of the 20th century by the German philsopher, Edmund Husserl, who adapted the meaning for its use in phenomenology. It was also borrowed into the vocabulary of photography.

Brackets, and braces, came via French from Latin, which in turn borrowed the word, brāca, from Gaulish. The word meant leg coverings and is the origin of English britches (which is a variant of breeches. How so? Because these early proto-pants were L-shaped with the legs being at right angles to one another.

And lastly, a bracket can refer to the range or gradation of something like taxes.

What a grand lot of meanings this word has.

[Corrected typo.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

For a little more detail on the use of bracketing in phenomenology, here is a post where we discussed this before.

I have never conducted phenomenologic research myself, but I have always wondered how effective bracketing really is. Even though you bracket (or acknowledge) your biases, would that allow you to be more objective when interviewing? I suppose it would help, but I've wondered how much.

The square bracket is very useful to denote a phrase, eg, within a quotation but not by the writer being quoted: "A rose [or carnation] by any other name...."

For some reason, in this digital age when it's so easy, newspsper clips are still almost devoid of typography, just as if transmitted by teletype. Thus parentheses sub for the square bracket

I have often wondered whether lawsuits couldn't be thus triggered

newspsper clips are still almost devoid of typography

Strong words from a turingbot who doesn't use normal punctuation or standard abbreviations.

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Egg zackily wot I meant: see more, but ...