[Ads-l] "square brackets"

[Jim Parish]

I've heard other mathematicians refer to "round brackets" (you know, the 
ones surrounding this aside) as well - usually having just mentioned the 
others.

But that's one of the things we mathematicians do: group and classify 
things. One genus ("bracket"), at least four species (throwing in "angle 
brackets").

Jim Parish


On 3/25/2018 12:12 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> 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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