Submitted by ngungo  •  July 24, 2006

Parentheses vs. Square Brackets

From Jim Van:

“If the Recovery (read it Money) is in the millions [of dollars], even 4 decimal places would make a SIGNIFICANT figures.”

Question: What difference in use between parenthesis and square brackets?

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Jim Van  (unregistered)

May 13, 2007, 4:33pm

O, Ok.

Thank You, I am retarded.

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Dyske

July 24, 2006, 11:22am

Usually parentheses are for ancillary thoughts whereas square brackets are for editorial notes. In this example above, "read it Money" is a secondary thought he has, and "of dollars" clarifies what the number is referring to.

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semiotek

July 24, 2006, 12:46pm

Whatever about that, "a SIGNIFICANT figures" is clearly incorrect!

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Jim Van  (unregistered)

July 24, 2006, 1:00pm

Thanks to dyske for doing the honor [for me] to ngungo.
Never thought a comment would be further commented on!
As to Nicholas Sanders, please eleborate.

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porsche

July 24, 2006, 4:49pm

Jim, what Nicholas is saying is that you were mixing singular and plural. it should be "a SIGNIFICANT figure", no "s" on the end. Referring to the original post, a small fraction of millions of dollars would be a lot of dollars, but the dollar amount would be only one figure.

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