Punctuation Mark: Brackets

Brackets ([], (), <>, {})

Ø  Types:

· ( ) — parentheses, round brackets or soft brackets.

· [ ] — square brackets, closed brackets, hard brackets, or brackets (US).

· < > — inequality signs, pointy brackets, or brackets. Sometimes referred to as angle brackets, in such cases as HTML markup. Occasionally known as broken brackets or brokets.

· { } — braces (UK and US), French brackets, curly brackets, definite brackets, swirly brackets, curly braces, birdie brackets, Scottish brackets, squirrelly brackets, gullwings, seagull, squiggly brackets or fancy brackets.

Ø  Usage

· ( ) — Parentheses contain material that could be omitted without destroying or altering the meaning of a sentence. But in most writing, overuse of parentheses is usually a sign of a badly structured text. Parentheses may be used in formal writing to add supplementary information. For example:

-        Sonic boom (shock waves of sound) may be compared to bow waves (shock waves of water) made by a vessel.

-        The women (all except Nancy) began to cheer.

· [ ] — Square brackets are mainly used to enclose explanatory or missing material usually added by someone other than the original author, especially in quoted text. Examples include: "I appreciate it [the honor], but I must refuse". They may also be used to modify quotations. For example, if referring to someone's statement "I hate to do laundry", one could write: He "hate[s] to do laundry".

· { } — Curly brackets are used in specialized ways in poetry and music (to mark repeats or joined lines), and in writing, they may be used similarly, "Select your animal {goat, sheep, cow, horse} and follow me".

For addition, parentheses may be nested (generally with one set (such as this) inside another set). This is not commonly used in formal writing (though sometimes other brackets [especially square brackets] will be used for one or more inner set of parentheses [in other words, secondary {or even tertiary} phrases can be found within the main parenthetical sentence]).

 

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Sources:

Cooper, T., Fallas, J., & Flaherty, F. (2011). English Style Guide: Seventh edition. European Commission.

Englishclub.com. (2013). Punctuation. Retrieved from http://www.englishclub.com/writing/punctuation.htm.

Phythian, B. A. (2012). Correct English: Pedoman Belajar Bahasa Inggris. Jakarta : PT. Indeks.

       Wikipedia. (2013). Punctuation. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Punctuation.