

They can also indicate shorthand for " either singular or plural" for nouns, e.g. Parentheses may be used in formal writing to add supplementary information, such as "Senator John McCain ( R - Arizona) spoke at length". In American usage, parentheses are usually considered separate from other brackets, and calling them "brackets" is unusual. That issue is fixed by using a pair of dashes instead, to bracket the parenthetical. A milder effect may be obtained by using a pair of commas as the delimiter, though if the sentence contains commas for other purposes, visual confusion may result. Parentheses contain adjunctive material that serves to clarify (in the manner of a gloss) or is aside from the main point. Parentheses / p ə ˈ r ɛ n θ ɪ s iː z/ (singular, parenthesis / p ə ˈ r ɛ n θ ɪ s ɪ s/) are also called "brackets" (UK, Ireland, Canada, West Indies, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia), "parens" / p ə ˈ r ɛ n z/, "round brackets", "circle brackets" or "smooth brackets". For the Wikipedia policy on brackets, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style § Brackets and parentheses. However, in other languages like German, if brackets enclose text in italics, they are usually also set in italics. In English, typographers mostly prefer not to set brackets in italics, even when the enclosed text is italic. In 1961, ASCII contained parenthesis, square, and curly brackets, and also less-than and greater-than signs that could be used as angle brackets.

BRACES BRACKETS CODE
Square brackets appeared with some teleprinters.īraces (curly brackets) first became part of a character set with the 8-bit code of the IBM 7030 Stretch.

Most typewriters only had the left and right parenthesis (and quotation marks). Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus coined the term lunula to refer to the rounded parentheses ( ) recalling the shape of the crescent moon ( Latin: luna).
