Are brackets different in American English? I'd say the Queen should order a second burning down of Washington but, the way things are going, the locals will probably get to it soon.
There seems to be some confusion. I am saying the top is American - at least as I was taught it in school. The bottom is the more typically British variant. But I think the reality is the both America and Britain have variations. To an American ear, bracket to mean parenthesis is not just odd, but wrong. But someone already said they consider bracket to be a catchall term, so obviously this is not universal.
Edit: okay, apparently there is just complete bracket anarchy across America and words have no fixed meaning.
Chiming in as someone who has lived decades in both South East US and North East US. I've also never heard () called "brackets" only "parentheses". This includes in and out of programming circles.
I assumed the comment saying "parens: ()" was talking about US, but the replies seem to be interpreting the opposite.
BODMAS for me too, although the "O" always confused me, the "E" standing for "exponent" always made more sense to me than the O" standing for "[to the power] of"
In my lifetime, “parentheses” has been the canonical way to refer to () in the US. “Brackets” is an umbrella term that can describe one or all of (), {}, and [].
If you’re in a context where only one of the bracket types would normally be used, you can just call them “brackets.” Since many people never really use [] and {}, “brackets” casually refers to ().
To disambiguate, you can call () “open brackets”, [] “square brackets”, and {} “curly brackets.”
And for the cherry on top, {} can be called “curly braces.” That’s my preferred term for them. But it’s awkward to call [] “square braces” and () “open braces” :)
Same. I've seen {} and [] both called braces and brackets, though usually in that respective order. The ambiguity is precisely why they are also called curly braces and square brackets. The double naming is more concrete.
I've never seen or heard any programmer call () brackets or braces. It's always parentheses. I may have heard a math or science teacher call them all brackets or braces, however, since they are synonymous there outside of odd exceptions like interval notation.
