Editing Bracket (section)

{{Short description|Punctuation mark}}
{{About|the family of punctuation marks}}
{{More citations needed|date=March 2022}}
{{EngvarB|date=November 2020}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2016}}
{{Bracket terms}}
A '''bracket''' is either of two tall fore- or back-facing [[punctuation]] marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings.{{sfn|McArthur|McArthur|2005}} They come in four main pairs of shapes, as given in the box to the right, which also gives their names, that vary between [[British English|British]] and [[American English]].{{sfn|Pointon|Clark|2014|p=406}} "Brackets", without further qualification, are in British English the {{char|(}}...{{char|)}} marks and in American English the {{char|[}}...{{char|]}} marks.{{sfn|Pointon|Clark|2014|p=406}}{{sfn|McArthur|McArthur|2005}}

Other symbols are repurposed as brackets in specialist contexts, such as [[International Phonetic Alphabet#Brackets and transcription delimiters|those used by linguists]].{{sfn|Peters|2007|p=101}}

Brackets are typically deployed in symmetric pairs, and an individual bracket may be identified as a "left" or "right" bracket or, alternatively, an "opening bracket" or "closing bracket",<ref name="unicode-9">{{cite web |url= https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr9/#Paired_Brackets |title=Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm |at=§ 3.1.3 Paired Brackets |access-date=24 April 2018 |website=Unicode Technical Reports |publisher=Unicode Consortium |archive-date=3 October 2018 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20181003140816/http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr9/#Paired_Brackets |url-status=live}}</ref> respectively, depending on the [[Writing system#Directionality|directionality]] of the context.

In casual writing and in technical fields such as computing or linguistic analysis of [[grammar]], brackets [[nesting (computing)|nest]], with segments of bracketed material containing embedded within them other further bracketed sub-segments.{{sfn|McArthur|McArthur|2005}} The number of opening brackets matches the number of closing brackets in such cases.{{sfn|McArthur|McArthur|2005}}

[[Glossary of mathematical symbols#Brackets|Various forms of brackets are used in mathematics]], with specific mathematical meanings, often for denoting specific [[function (mathematics)|mathematical functions]] and [[subformula]]s.