Hi, my dear teachers,
Firstly, sorry.
I posted my above question on another discussion mistakenly.
Secondly, I read on English Club's grammar about "brackets":
https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/sentence/parenthetical-expression.htm
It says: "Brackets are the next most common form of punctuation for parentheses."
It looks like "brackets" and "parentheses" are the same, am I correct?
If not, what is the difference between them, please?
Thanks in advance for helping me,
Replies
Dear Danny,
Thank you and best wishes,
Dear Bijan, we don't usually use braces in the regular text. They are mostly used in some scientific texts, formulas, when you want to show operation order. I know Tanya uses them explaining grammar meaning the choice like this:
I would like {him/her/them} to do it.
She means the students have to use one of the given words. But she places these words in a column.
Dear Danny,
Thank you very much.
I got "parentheses" and "round brackets"s are the same.
One question, please:
In which cases, can we use curly brackets { } in a sentence, please?
Thanks in advance and best wishes,
Dear Bijan, I am sorry! I read EC link and it is about parenthesis. I was just inattentive.
OK, parentheses is plural for parenthesis and it defines such brackets (), i.e., round brackets.
These [] are square brackets.
These {} are braces or curly brackets or squiggle brackets.
So, the word BRACKETS defines ANY brackets, while PARENTHESES defines only round brackets.
Dear Danny,
Sorry.
My question is about parentheses, not parenthesis.
Cambridge Dictionary says about parentheses: "the symbols () that are put around a word, phrase....
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/parentheses
Thus, here are my questions:
1. What is the difference between "brackets" and "parentheses"?
2. What does "round brackets" mean in the above link (.......)?
3. what is the name of this sign [ ] in English language, please?
Thanks a lot and best wishes,
Dear Bijan, I am sorry but you are wrong. Brackets are a kind of punctuation like commas, dashes, etc., while the parenthesis is a phrase adding some more information to a sentence. In the given example
Cats (and some dogs) like fish
AND SOME DOGS is a parenthesis and the brackes () just help us usunderstand it separating it from the main sentence.