Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: Mike Edenfield <kutulu@××××××.org>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: [WAY OT] Parenthese, was Re: [gentoo-user] I can RTFM, but can I understand it: re elog messages
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:08:43
Message-Id: 4C6EB66A.80100@kutulu.org
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] I can RTFM, but can I understand it: re elog messages by Kevin O'Gorman
1 On 8/20/2010 11:40 AM, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
2
3 > As to the thingies, I enjoyed discovering that to many people a
4 > parenthesis is not a glyph or punctuation mark, but instead the contents
5 > of the language set aside in one way or another. I had always regarded
6 > parentheses as the round glyphs (), but this turns out to be normative
7 > primarily in mathematics, computer programming languages and similar
8 > fields. But I find several competing meanings and sources using
9 > http://dictionary.reference.com/cite.html?qh=parenthesis&ia=luna
10 > <http://dictionary.reference.com/cite.html?qh=parenthesis&ia=luna>
11
12 In American English usage, the three forms of puncutation mark have
13 distinct names. Contrary to previous assertions, these names are not
14 informal; authoritative American English dictionaries like M-W define
15 "bracket", "brace", and "parenthesis" separately as punctuation marks.
16
17 In British English they're all called "brackets", e.g. square, curly, or
18 round.
19
20 The Romance languages are somewhat varied, but they mostly use the Greek
21 word parenthesis to derive their term for () marks; in some cases, that
22 word is use for *all* brackets; in other cases [] and {} have separate
23 terms:
24
25 () = parenthèses (Fr.), paréntesis (Sp.), parentesi tonde (It.)
26 [] = crochets (Fr.), corchetes (Sp.), parentesi quadre (It.)
27 {} = accolades (Fr.), corchetes (Sp.), parentesi graffe (It.)
28
29 For what it's worth, Unicode defines U+0028 AND U+0029 as "LEFT
30 PARENTHESIS" and "RIGHT PARENTHESIS" (also "OPENING PARENTHESIS" and
31 "CLOSING PARENTHESIS").
32
33 --Mike

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