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Archive 1Archive 2

Braces

I've just reverted an anon editors claim that "curly bracket" is a colloquial term. I think this is an EngVar issue because, in the UK, "curly bracket" is much more common than "curly brace" (the exceptions being computer books published in the USA). What does anyone else think? I'd be happy to add a note that the use of "curly bracket" is deprecated in American English. Dbfirs 23:12, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

This is NOT an EngVar difference - as shown in the C Programming Language, C++ Programming language specifications. I did not cite the Java Language specification, or the C# language specification, but I could have because it is specified there also that these are "braces". Using "Bracket" or "Curly Bracket" for braces in these languages is *wrong*. I would show my references, but you deleted them! 74.194.78.21 (talk) 23:19, 24 January 2016 (UTC)'

I'd be happy with a note to this effect for the computer term, but this article is about a much wider usage. Dbfirs 23:28, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
I've restored your reference for the computing usage, with apologies for accidentally deleting it. Dbfirs 23:34, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
Still think it needs cleanup, for example - the line that says "Such languages (C being one of the best-known examples) are therefore called curly bracket languages.[19]" points to a page that calls them braces, strangely enough. Every math page I've looked at has denoted they were called braces also. 74.194.78.21 (talk) 23:51, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree it needs cleanup. American math pages will call then braces because of EngVar, but British maths pages call them curly brackets, and the OED says under bracket: "One of two marks of the form [ ] or ( ), and in mathematical use also {}, used for enclosing a word or number of words, a portion of a mathematical formula, or the like, so as to separate it from the context". I'll make a start on cleaning up. Dbfirs 00:08, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

In 20+ years working as a physicist and program manager in Silicon Valley, with hundreds of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians, and including numerous software development efforts, I never once heard anyone call a curly bracket a brace. Not once. "Pointy bracket", yes, very common. Brace, never. So, regardless of what appears in specs or math[s] pages -- and seriously does anyone really think humans talk like those sources? -- "brace" is not common usage here, or anywhere else in the US that a dealt with. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.213.71 (talk) 12:59, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

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6/2(1+2)

Someone has edited the article to include 6/2(1+2)=1

I think it is indeed equal to 1. The O of BODMAS stands for of and it's done before division. a(b) and (a)(b) don't imply a*b. They imply a of b.

6/2(1+2) = 6/2(3) = 6/2 of 3 = 6/6 = 1

It's a bad example because the layout makes it ambiguous. Dbfirs 06:27, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Parentheses denoting uncertainty

The article Planck_constant uses parentheses like this: 6.626070040(81)×10−34. Shouldn't this use be explained here? Bo Jacoby (talk) 07:19, 13 October 2017 (UTC).

Tournament Brackets named for resemblance to typographical brackets?

This needs a citation! The word "bracket" doesn't exclusively refer to a typographical symbol.

Certain kinds of connectors or retaining structures used in various types of construction or assembly are also brackets. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.81.120.1 (talk) 20:17, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

That is why the first line in italics says "This article is about the typographic symbol. For other uses, see Bracket (disambiguation)". --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:13, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Chevrons as a Blanket Term? Actually Full Rewrite Needed ugh.

Is there a reason this article occasionally veers into using the term “chevron” as a general term of which any angled punctuation mark is a hyper-specific subset? I mean anything in a general “V” shape can be considered a chevron and there doesn’t seem to be any significant case in which such punctuation symbols are truly treated interchangeable. Some of the language on this page describes < and > as chevrons and then almost begrudgingly admits that they are actually not chevrons at all (except in the most general sense, not relevant here). AFAIK what are (primarily jargon-exclusively) referred to as angle brackets in General American English are actually commonly (“commonly” lol) referred to as chevrons in at least some of the many English languages of England, but neither of these terms includes < or > or especially guillemets. Anyway I’m rambling but this page is a terminological catastrophe in general and can’t decide what language, let alone “dialect”, it wants to be written in. I propose a full rewrite. Andyharbor (talk) 14:47, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Also most of these are not brackets??? What is up with this page? Andyharbor (talk) 14:48, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the references to chevron are just confusing noise, given that more well known examples (Chevron Corporation, Citröen, sergeant's stripes) are all horizontal. Guillemets are not brackets, they are French quotation marks. I think that the term "angle bracket" is used in all varieties of English for ⟨ ⟩ but it is not really used in English English outside technical contexts (such as for graphemes or in programming).
It would be wise to identify here first what you think should go and at least outline your planned rewrite. but wp:be bold if you don't mind the revert discuss phase. But I can't see anyone objecting to chopping out the chevrons: I had the same reaction to them but I thought it must be an American thing. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:33, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
Sharp deviation of route to the left
Having a search around, the culprit seems to be road signs, e.g. ⟩⟩⟩ meaning 'sharp turn right', where they are called chevrons. See also Caret for a similar misunderstanding that has become the norm. But IMO, in an article about brackets, we should use the correct typographic term and leave the misnomer to a footnote.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:53, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Parentheses deserve their own article

Parentheses are more than just a type of bracket, they clearly deserve their own page TheConflux (talk) 22:14, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm sure these all had their own articles at one time, and somebody got mad that "bracket" went to the wrong (in their opinion) one and that is why they are all merged together now. You can see that stuff is repeated and also unnecessarily split by type of bracket, showing that this article was pasted together from several articles. I think it can be split, and make "bracket" go to some disambiguation page that says it may either mean parenthesis or square brackets.Spitzak (talk) 23:00, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

'Cleanup' tag

@D.Lazard: You added a clean-up tag, giving as a reason that the article has four sections called 'Mathematics'. This is true, becuase it is for good reason. Each type of bracket has a mathematical use (Grandmothers sucking eggs, in your case, I know). But the article is divided by type of bracket then application within type. It would make no sense to divide by application and then by type (which in any case would result in exactly the same problem of repeated section titles). Maybe it would be more productive if you would propose a solution to the problem you perceive? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:34, 28 August 2021 (UTC)

In MOS:NOSECTIONLINKS, it is written Section headings should be unique within a page, so that section links lead to the right place. The non-respect of this rule causes many problems when searching something inside an article. For example, if an edit summary links to a section, one gets a random section (among four in this case) when following the link in the edit summary. I have not fixed the issue myself, because I have not found a satisfactory way to solve the problem. D.Lazard (talk) 21:00, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
The real problem is that this is 3 or 4 wikipedia subjects merged together, likely because there was an argument about which one "bracket" should go to. It would be best to split these up again.Spitzak (talk) 01:55, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Imo, the issue must be solved by completely structuring the article: Grouping the uses by shape is not convenient for most readers, since a reader interested in square brackets in typography is more probably interested in curly brackets in typography than in square brackets in mathematics. Similarly, a reader interested in one sort of brackets in mathematics is probably interested in the differences of meaning with other sorts of brackets used in mathematics. So grouping by domain of uses is much more convenient. D.Lazard (talk) 09:39, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

No please don't undo the recent cleanup!!!! I spent considerable time trying to fix this mess, which actually had SIX sections about "mathematics". I see you have decided we need five. Sigh.
The REAL fix is to cut this back up into an article for each type of bracket. NOBODY thinks parenthesis and square brackets are the same thing. I am reasonably certain somebody complained at one time that "bracket" redirected to the wrong article, resulting in this silly merge. Recommend that "bracket" go to a disambiguation page that gives the two possibilities, and use "parenthesis", "square bracket" as article titles.Spitzak (talk) 15:00, 29 August 2021 (UTC)
Spitzak, I strongly disagree with your suggestion: The topic here is not the typographical shapes of brackets, it is the style technics for isolating a part of speech for some purpose. Disambiguation pages are not for distinguishing between related topics. D.Lazard (talk) 16:36, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

I don't see how there can be a consensus solution to this: you are both equally right and equally wrong depending on starting assumptions. Either way, mos:sectionlinks is neither a necessary nor a sufficient reason to recast the article. It seems to me that we must choose between having an article (or articles) about the various types of bracket that mentions their uses, or we have articles about mathematics and programming that mention the types they use. Oh wait, we already have the latter so lets keep the article as it is (describing the former). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:52, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

Effectively a contradiction

This seems to somewhat contradict itself:

"...the word bracket is commonly used to refer to a specific form of bracket, which varies from region to region. In most English-speaking countries, an unqualified 'bracket' refers to the round bracket; in the United States, the square bracket"

OK, perhaps not strictly, but if most use an unqualified 'bracket' then it is not commonly used. And if it varies from region to region then most can't use an unqualified 'bracket'.

That is, how it is read, not the strict logic. Perhaps rephrase?

--Mortense (talk) 15:15, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

How about
"...the word bracket is commonly used to refer to a specific form of bracket, which varies from region to region. In most English-speaking countries, the word 'bracket' when used without qualification refers to the round bracket; in the United States, to the square bracket"
Howzat! --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:03, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

Rewrite the parentheses section

I know the author must have felt clever, but we're not TV Tropes. Every other article about punctuation describes the subject and then provides an example of usage, and this one should too. ISaveNewspapers (talk) 03:12, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Is guillemets pair a type of bracket?

Hi, is a pair of guillemets (i.e., the signs « and ») a type of brackets? If it is true, it should be added to the Infobox as a type of it. Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 13:09, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

No, they are a type of quotation mark. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:20, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
@John Maynard Friedman Here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket#Unicode says that quotation marks are types of brackets. So, in my opinion, the Infobox of this article should be completed to show more types of brackets. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 13:32, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
@Hooman Mallahzadeh: The quotation marks, irrespective of type, should never have been in that table because they are punctuation marks, not brackets. Somebody had already put a note in the table to say exactly that but had not been bold enough to actually delete those lines. I have now done just that. See also List of mathematical symbols by subject, which has all the other symbols in the table but not quotation marks. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:14, 18 June 2022 (UTC)
More generally, the infobox for an article is intended to convey the essential information "at a glance". It is analagous the the lead paragraph, in that the body of the article goes into the detail of special cases. If the infobox gets cluttered up with these, it ceases to be useful. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:21, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Canadian terminology

There's been quite a bit of an edit war going on about Canadian usage. Peter Njeim has made a particular case with one source; it has been objected to by Drmies (and apparently by MrOllie who did a "backup revert" to Drmies's version) as insufficient because it is a primary source. But the version being reverted to has no source at all for the counter-claim. I'm not sure I care either way, but the discussion needs to happen instead of more WP:REVTALK.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:41, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

  • The problem with that edit is the over-specialization, which is just very unhelpful. My "solution" was to remove some of the unverified (and in my opinion, irrelevant) text, which hinted at a discussion of dictionary definitions. Drmies (talk) 15:45, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
    @Drmies Would you like me to remove the "except Canada" part, and just use the terms North American English and Commonwealth English, with the expectation that the reader understands that Canada is included in North American English and thus excludes it from Commonwealth English for that phrase?
    • As a Canadian, this is a problem for me when I'm editing articles that deal with American vs. British English, because Canada has a mix of both, usually it uses American terminology (and sometimes American spelling) and British spelling. However, because most secondary sources just say "American vs. British", there's a lack of secondary sources that deal with Canadian English specifically. While this means I probably shouldn't include information about Canadian English, the reality is that I always see people including Canada in the list of countries that use British (or Commonwealth) English, when it's actually 50/50 whether Canada follows their convention.
    • As for my source, it's not really a dictionary, it's more of a style guide provided by the government to help citizens write in Canadian English. This is because there's a cultural element where Canadians want to remain distinct from both British and American English. Do style guides count as primary sources in this case? Can I use this source to cite the term North American English and just not use "except Canada" at all? The rest of the article already cites articles about American vs. British English so we don't need an American source when citing the term North American English, in my opinion. What do you think? Peter Njeim (talk) 16:16, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
      • Hi Peter Njeim--one of the problems with primary sourcing is that they cannot establish that something is really of encyclopedic value. I don't doubt the accuracy, not at all--I just doubt whether it serves a general readership, particularly in the lead. And that's really my other problem with the edit (and the material that was already there): it's way too detailed for the first paragraph of the article; no one needs that kind of density there. Elsewhere in the article, that's a different matter, but there also, rather than adding verified material on one little thing (or one country's usage in a list of countries' usages), it is preferable to overhaul the whole thing, starting with pruning of material that's poorly verified, irrelevant, or both. I hope you understand that, at least for me, "poorly verified" and "irrelevant" go hand in hand. Or, to put it another way, it's secondary sources that establish whether content is of broader relevance or not. Does that make sense? So I guess I'm asking you to not bloat the lead. And as for Canada--I understand what you're saying, and we shouldn't lump things together based on assumptions. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 16:35, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
        @Drmies Maybe there's a misunderstanding because I don't recall editing the lead, unless you mean the lead of a subsection? As for bloating, my edit makes use of less words than what I replaced, so I thought I was making it more concise. Since you won't relent on the sourcing, I'm guessing you want me to just use the terms American English and British English, without mentioning countries at all? Peter Njeim (talk) 16:50, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
        Removing the list of countries would seem to be necessary. We don't have solid sourcing for all of them (any of them?) so the assertion has to go. Simply stating British English and American English with links should suffice.
        The point of this material is to help readers who may be unfamiliar with one of the terms, not to provide a linguistic map of where each term is predominant. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:59, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
The cited source [[1]] seems very solid as a WP:RS, and it clearly states that "parentheses" is the common term used in Canada. (Or at least Anglophone Canada - English is not the only language used up there).
When it comes to punctuation terms, we side with Americans, speaking of periods rather than full stops and of parentheses rather than brackets or round brackets. In Canada, as in the U.S., the term brackets generally refers to square brackets: [ ].
So, I think the current version of the article stating the opposite needs to be corrected.
That said, there are many variants of "British English" used in various "Commonwealth" regions and I don't think this is the place to delve into each and every one of them. I'd advocate simply replacing the current:
( and ) are called parentheses /pəˈrɛnθɪsiːz/ (singular parenthesis /pəˈrɛnθɪsɪs/) in American English, and "brackets" informally in the UK, India, Ireland, Canada, the West Indies, New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia; they are also known as "round brackets", "parens" /pəˈrɛnz/, "circle brackets", or "smooth brackets".
with
( and ) are called parentheses /pəˈrɛnθɪsiːz/ (singular parenthesis /pəˈrɛnθɪsɪs/) in American English, and "brackets" informally in British English; they are also known as "round brackets", "parens" /pəˈrɛnz/, "circle brackets", or "smooth brackets".
This obviates the issue; when Canadians use British or American English can be addressed elsewhere. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:54, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
For my part, I will note that there are multiple Canadian style guides and other reference works (dictionaries and grammar guides and such) which are apt to be relevant. I no longer have a collection of these (I used to have nearly every such work in print from the last century or so, for every variety of English, but that was back when I lived in a huge converted-warehouse space and had room for thousands of obsessively collected books), so I won't personally be much help on this, but they are worth looking for. A few of them might even be accessible through Internet Archive's Open Library. The others are apt to be worth buying for someone who wants to adjust our articles on English to include Canadian usage in more detail.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:02, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Not dictionaries

Instead of sourcing to a Unicode technical report and dictionaries, why not source to experts who have done the work for you? The The Oxford Companion to the English Language (McArthur, Lam-McArthur, and Fontaine) has a section on brackets, and it goes into the differences in its first paragraph. It's that Tom McArthur. Pam Peters's The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage has a section on brackets, too. There's even a Routledge book Words: A Users' Guide by Pointon and Clark that could be used to source a basic introduction. And they address the topic as four different types of symbol shape; the names are not the defining differences. Uncle G (talk) 20:39, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

It's not an either-or, but yes, these sound like good sources to use. But dictionaries and Unicode reports are useful for various purposes as well.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  14:00, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Mass deletion of mostly sourced material

Drmies recently denuded the article of a lot of detail, much of which was sourced. This is a combined diff (including a post hoc citation repair by AnomieBOT) [2]. Some of this was probably encyclopedically constructive, other aspects of it might be more debatable, but it bears examination being a rather drastic undiscussed set of changes.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:44, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

Per Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information "... merely being true, or even verifiable, does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in the encyclopedia."
My take is that these removals improve the article; many wikipedia article could use periodic weeding like this. If there is some specific material that should be reinstated, I'm happy to discuss that. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:28, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
Almost all of our articles on characters include Unicode information, since it's pertinent in its details to more technical readers, and it's of use to more general readers in distinguishing between similar characters/glyphs, and even recognizing when a specific glyph or set of them is used in a particular language or context. I'm not sure how much of the other material I care about all that much. Quoting dictionary definitions in their entirety is often not helpful, except to illustrate conflicting definitions when we have a need to do that. But dictionaries are often pertinent and valid tertiary sources even if we're not block-quoting from them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:08, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
I restored the Unicode table (which obviated the citation repair). Drmies said put it on Wikidata, but if this info is on Wikidata, I don't see it, though I'm not sure I know how to navigate Wikidata.
Another problem not mentioned is that the section Angle brackets has a link to the "table below", which was broken by the removal. @Drmies, please don't be so hasty with content removal in the future.
Lastly, I mentioned this in my edit summary but I'll put it here too: Pages about characters typically include Unicode information, e.g. Hyphen § Unicode; see {{Navbox punctuation}} for more. Or, for letters:
— W.andrea (talk) 17:42, 21 November 2023 (UTC), edited 18:45
I agree completely and applaud W.andrea's reversion. Drmies also destroyed the lead to the point of uselessness. It is critical to state at the outset that there are four types of bracket, and the word bracket means something quite different in British English v American English. Accordingly, I have restored the stable version. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:51, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
JMF, that lead is as clear as mud, but it matches the article nicely. Y'all should really restore that pop song nonsense as well, since, as is clear from the lead which discusses usage of a word in various languages, DICDEF is what is happening here. Drmies (talk) 01:39, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Massive Unicode table

Parenthesis
( )
Parentheses (AE)
or
brackets (BE)
or
round brackets (BE)[1]
In Unicode
General purpose (half-width):
  • U+0028 ( LEFT PARENTHESIS (&lpar;)
  • U+0029 ) RIGHT PARENTHESIS (&rpar;)
General purpose (full-width East Asian):
  • U+FF08 （ FULLWIDTH LEFT PARENTHESIS
  • U+FF09 ） FULLWIDTH RIGHT PARENTHESIS
Arabic script (Quranic quotations):
  • U+FD3E ﴾ ORNATE LEFT PARENTHESIS
  • U+FD3F ﴿ ORNATE RIGHT PARENTHESIS
Mediaeval studies:
  • U+2E28 ⸨ LEFT DOUBLE PARENTHESIS
  • U+2E29 ⸩ RIGHT DOUBLE PARENTHESIS
Technical:
  • U+207D ⁽ SUPERSCRIPT LEFT PARENTHESIS
  • U+207E ⁾ SUPERSCRIPT RIGHT PARENTHESIS
  • U+208D ₍ SUBSCRIPT LEFT PARENTHESIS
  • U+208E ₎ SUBSCRIPT RIGHT PARENTHESIS
  • U+239B ⎛ LEFT PARENTHESIS UPPER HOOK
  • U+239C ⎜ LEFT PARENTHESIS EXTENSION
  • U+239D ⎝ LEFT PARENTHESIS LOWER HOOK
  • U+239E ⎞ RIGHT PARENTHESIS UPPER HOOK
  • U+239F ⎟ RIGHT PARENTHESIS EXTENSION
  • U+23A0 ⎠ RIGHT PARENTHESIS LOWER HOOK
  • U+23DC ⏜ TOP PARENTHESIS (&OverParenthesis;)
  • U+23DD ⏝ BOTTOM PARENTHESIS (&UnderParenthesis;)
  • U+27EE ⟮ MATHEMATICAL LEFT FLATTENED PARENTHESIS
  • U+27EF ⟯ MATHEMATICAL RIGHT FLATTENED PARENTHESIS
  • U+2983 ⦃ LEFT WHITE CURLY BRACKET
  • U+2984 ⦄ RIGHT WHITE CURLY BRACKET
  • U+2985 ⦅ LEFT WHITE PARENTHESIS (&lopar;)
  • U+2986 ⦆ RIGHT WHITE PARENTHESIS (&ropar;)
  • U+2E59 ⹙ TOP HALF LEFT PARENTHESIS
  • U+2E5A ⹚ TOP HALF RIGHT PARENTHESIS
  • U+2E5B ⹛ BOTTOM HALF LEFT PARENTHESIS
  • U+2E5C ⹜ BOTTOM HALF RIGHT PARENTHESIS
  • U+2768 ❨ MEDIUM LEFT PARENTHESIS ORNAMENT
  • U+2769 ❩ MEDIUM RIGHT PARENTHESIS ORNAMENT
Dingbats:
  • U+2768 ❨ MEDIUM LEFT PARENTHESIS ORNAMENT
  • U+2769 ❩ MEDIUM RIGHT PARENTHESIS ORNAMENT
  • U+276A ❪ MEDIUM FLATTENED LEFT PARENTHESIS ORNAMENT
  • U+276B ❫ MEDIUM FLATTENED RIGHT PARENTHESIS ORNAMENT

The next bone of contention from the above is the massive Unicode table. I do wonder how on Earth writers are expecting readers to use it. Organizing it by Unicode sub-range before bracket shape makes no sense, as readers aren't going to know the Unicode sub-ranges before looking things up. If they did, they wouldn't be looking things up in this article in the first place.

You all know that {{Infobox punctuation mark}} has a unicode_list= parameter that takes a list of {{unichar|[…]|html=}} templates, right? Why not put the Unicode for the four kinds of shapes, grouped by the four kinds of shapes, in the infoboxes in their sections that already exist, with the miscellaneous shapes in the miscellaneous shapes section?

For starters, readers will have the various characters right there, in the section discussing them, instead of having a massive box to scroll through. It makes better sense to split the Unicode in the same way that the prose of the article splits up the shape groups.

And the infoboxes in the detail section should not be, although they currently are, less detailed than the infobox in the introduction. If anything, it should be the other way around.

Let's be imaginative here. The lengthy Unicode table can be five shorter Unicode tables in the several sections of the article, running in parallel with the prose. We can make the article about 2⁄3 of its current length, at a conservative estimate, just by putting tables in parallel with the prose instead of serially following the prose and being half the length of the entire article.

I've done parenthesis for you here, as an example. That's far fewer rows for the massive ages-to-scroll-through Unicode table to include, and the parenthesis prose section is easily long enough to accommodate the box. Look at how long it is. The other 3 can be done similarly. The {{unichar}} template has even automatically picked up some HTML entities that you've all missed. I didn't insert them.

Uncle G (talk) 05:42, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Pointon & Clark 2014, p. 406.
The underlying idea here (if not the infobox solution proposed) seems reasonable to me, at least for breaking up the table sectionally. Particularly: "Why not put the Unicode for the four kinds of shapes, grouped by the four kinds of shapes, ... in their sections that already exist, with the miscellaneous shapes in the miscellaneous shapes section? For starters, readers will have the various characters right there, in the section discussing them, instead of having a massive box to scroll through. It makes better sense to split the Unicode in the same way that the prose of the article splits up the shape groups." That said, I'm not sure that putting it in the infoboxes will work, because the i-boxes will end up being too long. E.g., just this parentheses box illustrated here would be longer than the entire content of the applicable section of the article at most window widths. Just using regular wikitables in the sections would work fine.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:30, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

User-friendliness

@W.andrea: hi.

Do you think I didn't know why it was that way? I just happen to be convinced that keeping a strictly orderly sequence between AE and BE terms in the table is much more encyclopedic and user-friendly than jumping back & forth, just in order to have "bracket" in the first 2 positions.

In a case of your opinion against mine, I think it's more appropriate to ping me here first before removing my edit. Now we can argue, others can join in, and we'lk see. Cheers, Arminden (talk) 23:40, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm not about to argue, but I'll happily discuss.

Do you think I didn't know why it was that way?

Yes, I thought you didn't realize.
I respect wanting to keep AE and BE in order, but I think it's more important to keep the article title first.
Note that if you go to Parentheses, you end up on the Parentheses section, so I think for the lead, we should focus on the term "bracket".
Secondly, there's also the "BE&AE", which should be changed to "AE&BE" if you want to keep a strict order.
— W.andrea (talk) 23:58, 28 November 2023 (UTC) edited 00:06
This table is a bit WP:OR anyway. It's routine for "computer nerds", including American ones, to refer to [these as square brackets] and (these as round brackets) for clarity. The idea that either of those phrase are "British" is false. Especially when you consider that all these "British" terms are common throughout much but not all of the Commonwealth plus Ireland, while the "American" terms are also common in Canada, and probably (I haven't checked) other places where English has some use but it is strongly American-influenced.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 

Stack Exchange

With the best will in the world we should not be sourcing content to a wiki-editable answer from a pseudonymous person on Stack Exchange. Especially as we are sourcing the major claim about braces to one person's comment on that answer. Uncle G (talk) 08:04, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Dubious laundry list of brace names

There's a dubious laundry list of brace names that has grown over the years. I found a definite source for only one. Names like "Scottish bracket" and "French bracket" seem especially dubious, and "twirly bracket" et al. seem like outright slang dictionary territory. I couldn't find sources that supported any of these, except that I can find occurrences of "Tuborgklamme" (not "Tuborg bracket") so that one, amazingly enough, seems to be true but undocumented if it were actually stated as "Tuborgklamme". Uncle G (talk) 08:04, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

Long lists of Unicode codepoints "beside" each type - for most readers, who are on mobile phones, before each type

Did any WP:think of the reader on mobile? Who thought it would be a good idea to have a long list of detailed Unicode code-points that the mobile reader would have to skip past before getting any content?

Is there a convincing reason to retain the current layout rather than put it at the bottom of the article as is conventional? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I'd be in favour of putting them back at the bottom. They could be in subsections (Parentheses, Square brackets, etc.) to resolve an earlier complaint that

Organizing it by Unicode sub-range before bracket shape makes no sense, as readers aren't going to know the Unicode sub-ranges before looking things up.

Myself, I had thought about moving them to the bottom of each section in order to avoid the massive infoboxes, which are hard to read in addition to taking up so much space.
Also, if we wanted to put them back in tables, we could take advantage of the {{unichar}} sub-templates like {{unichar/name}}. As said before, The {{unichar}} template has even automatically picked up some HTML entities ...
Lastly, I'm not sure why you're saying Who thought it would be a good idea when the revision history shows it was @Uncle G, and you even spoke with him about this before where he showed a mockup.
— W.andrea (talk) 02:54, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
    • You can blame Drmies for the initial complaint, which also seemed to be that there's just huge lists of data to scroll through. Mobile 'phone users have a mechanism for hiding infoboxes. But any way that one slices it, there's this huge dump of tables in the article, that was just as much a problem for mobile 'phone users at the bottom. The point of doing it this way is that we have all of the articles in Category:Unicode blocks already that do it with huge tables. Our punctuation articles in contrast use {{Infobox punctuation}}. And since it is a straightforward 2-level list we can probably make it collapsible in the infobox.

      The real problem, articulated by SMcCandlish earlier is that, largely because of the mathematical symbols (duplicating Bracket (mathematics)) the infoboxes are long. There is, simply put, almost more data dumping than prose in this article. Fortunately, it takes a pretty extreme 16:9 portrait view window to make the infoboxes be even as long as the prose in the sections, in landscape view the prose readily being longer than the infoboxes, and as I just demonstrated for one of the shorter sections whose infobox threatened to outgrow it that's because our prose is pretty superficial rubbish and actually could be significantly longer. Nowhere do we yet explain what a "tortoise shell bracket" is, for example, or properly explain a Chinese book title mark or proper noun mark.

      Uncle G (talk) 08:04, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

  • My "who thought it would be a good idea" was rhetorical (it is not difficult to find the answer). What I mean is this: what must have seemed a good idea at the time is now an overloaded dumpster. So to be more constructive, my counter proposal is to move the tables of codepoints out to the end of the article, into a new section (with subsections if appropriate). That way, the vast majority of readers can just stop reading if they are not interested. Personally, I strongly favour including this information so I don't want it to become so intrusive that a consensus arises to have it deleted completely. As this article stands, the intrusivity threshold has been breached, IMO. (btw, "mobile users can hide infoboxes" as a solution is up there with qu'ils mangent de la brioche. What? Everywhere? because of one article?) --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:35, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
    • I'm reading the silence as signifying assent, so within the next few days, I shall move long lists from the side to horizontal rows at the bottom, unless someone puts their head above the parapet to present a case for the defence. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:48, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
      • I think that you should instead read the rest of this talk page and Special:Diff/1184384698 as being a strong objection to the old style of a massive Unicode table being half the scrollable length of an article. Write prose, not tables, for goodness' sake! We have a whole category of Unicode table articles elsewhere. This article claims to be about punctuation. Uncle G (talk) 00:18, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
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