[Ads-l] "square brackets"

[Laurence Horn]

> On Mar 25, 2018, at 1:04 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> And "curly brackets"?
> 
> I grew up with "brackets" and "braces," not coming across the other version
> till 1972, when I was 35.
> 
> Youneverknow.

I think it was the late 1960s and early ‘70s when linguistic notation adopted both [square] brackets and curly brackets, a.k.a. braces, for different purposes.  If the latter (representing disjunctive ordering) had been called braces rather than curly brackets, I imagine the former would not have had to be designated by the retronym *square* brackets.

LH
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