Mottainai or The Language Discussions

This post reminded me of this thread. It seems like this kind of thing comes up a lot: I think of a “detour” as the action caused by a “diversion” while in American detour is also the thing.

Another one that has come up a lot for me recently is that to me the phrase in-between brackets may be parenthetical, a parenthesis, but the brackets themselves are brackets. To an American, the pair of brackets themselves are called parenthesis. So you have “parenthesis” marking off a parenthetical phrase, or maybe even something that isn’t parenthetical, which I find deeply weird.

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In American English we do have brackets but they are not the same thing as parentheses.

An open parenthesis - (
An open bracket - [

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Ah, a bracket and a square bracket!

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This reminds me of this article:

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Parenthesis: ( )
Bracket: [ ] a.k.a Square Bracket
Brace: { } a.k.a Curly Brace, a.k.a Curly Bracket

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Angle bracket, hard to show in a thing that interprets html but maybe < >

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In my American English, which might be very technically biased, a bracket is any character in the set of, er, brackets.

(<[{}]>)

They have actual names (parentheses, angle bracket, square, curly) which get used when it’s necessary to be clear. talking to someone about their python, I might say “that list comphrehsnion needs to be in brackets”, but would write " in square brackets" (or just “ silly”) to avoid confusion.

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Technical applications where these symbols are used with exact, domain-specific meanings definitely bias my nomenclature.

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I thought we all knew these by now!

( - frown
) - smile
< - less than
> - greater than
[ - open bracket
] - close bracket
{ - fancy open bracket
} - fancy close bracket
“Fancy” can be replaced by “Italicized” if you want.

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In a different context, an emdash — serves as a “parenthesis”, to set off the beginning and end of a clause which modern style would put in, er, parentheses (hence I think the name).

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I’m pretty sure you know, but an emdash is so called because it is the length of an M, and an endash is the length of an N.

By length, I mean width.

At least, I think?

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And it’s not called an “uhm”-dash because that’s how long it takes to say that?

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it all depends who you talk to. They’ll all agree that an emdash is wider than endash – but they won’t agree if it’s the width of an “M” or an “m”, and they might well tell you that an endash is some fraction (usually, not universally 1/2) of an emdash. then, of course, there’s the hyphen, which is a different dash, and figure dash, and minus sign (which isn’t a dash, dash it), the quotation dash, the swung dash and god knows what else.

I use just the one o my keybaord, repeatedly, if necessary. and god damn the software that turns – into an emdash. (that includes discourse, apparently. Dammit two hypens isn’t a emdash, people. )

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No, you mean length. At least, I think.
If you mean from end to end, that’s length, and it being horizontal doesn’t change that. Width would be side to side

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I find it absurd that most keyboards have two ways to type hyphens, but the hyphen directly above the plus on the numberpad isn’t a minus. I have to input the actual minus sign way more often than a hyphen these days (in order to simplify a step further - in the final output, I have to convert nearly all the characters that appear in the Symbol font set into the Symbol font).

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You can probably remap the keyboard to produce a minus for the number key pad.

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What’s the difference?

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The minus symbol is a bit longer, and aligned with other mathematical symbols (instead of being vertically offset, as you can see here: -−+=)

When it’s important to be clear which symbol is a hyphen, and which is a minus sign, the distinction matters. Unless it doesn’t, because a lot of people just always use the hyphen, because minus signs are such a pain to input.

In my case, as a final step before I submit very lengthy translations of technical and legal documents, I need to be able to find&replace all the minus signs with minus sign symbols, while skipping any hyphens. So I need to make sure I input different characters during the translation, because there’s no way I’m going to guarantee catching them all otherwise.

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As I don’t deal with highly technical and detailed documents where the different dashes matter, when I need a minus sign I shall continue to use whatever’s handiest and trust that context will make it very obvious that it’s a minus sign!

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Okay, just back from Amsterdam where my partner attended a physics conference, and I wandered the streets and going to museums, which has what to do with pronunciation I here you all ask?

Well, as it happens, the conference had a bunch of Japanese demonstrators of tech for the physicists to goggle at, there’s some marketing at physics conferences. Who knew?

Anyways, I got to introduce myself and spoke Japanese, which I haven’t practice for about 20 years. So I was as rough as old ropes, but despite being as rusty as hell, I impressed the Japanese presenters who enthusiastically remarked that I spoke Japanese.

Instant friends.

Turns out Japanese guys also like VOTOMS, which was another bonus, and I was honoured to be told to call the boss by his first name too.

Now I’m contemplating doing a refresher course on basic Japanese conversation, as one does.

Oh, if you want to know why I learnt to speak Japanese in the first place, just ask, but I think I’ve written enough for now about me.

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