RE: Simple symbol question
As found in Chicago Manual of Style and Standard Dictionary:
< > Angle Brackets
[ ] Square Brackets
{ } Braces
In one of my books, I called the {} characters curly brackets. At one
point I got a 500-line email explaining that those characters are called
braces, and if I got that detail wrong than surely every other fact in my
book was questionable and what kind of mouth-breathing lizard-skinned
troglodyte was I, anyhow.
I dutifully noted the error and corrected it in later editions.
Later on for another book, I got another 500-line email from someone
else explaining that the the # character, which I had called a hash sign
and didn't really think much about it, was called either a pound sign or a
hash mark, not both, and by calling it a hash sign I was barbarously
contributing to worldwide illiteracy, how dare you.
I learned two important lessons from this:
+ Here I thought fact-checking the tech was enough.
+ No matter how much you do right, there will always be someone, somewhere
who still thinks you're an idiot.
Laura
lizard-skinned troglodyte
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References:
RE: Simple symbol question: From: Hannah Bissell
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