What do people call the symbol '()' in English? A dictionary of my mother language mentions bracket or parenthesis, but I don't know which one is more commonly used among people in English native countries.


"Parentheses are mainly used to separate off information that isn’t essential to the meaning of the rest of the sentence. If you removed the material within the parentheses, the sentence would still make perfectly good sense."

Compare with:

"Brackets (also called square brackets) are mainly used to enclose words added by someone other than the original writer or speaker, typically in order to clarify the situation." - Source 1

A second explanation:


In addition, I personally hear the term 'brackets' more for informal settings, and 'parentheses' for formal settings. This is probably just because 'brackets' is a lot easier to say :P

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Normally they are simply termed brackets or parentheses - the latter probably being the preferred term if you're American since they tend to have a separate notion of these to other kinds of brackets. {} are termed "braces" or "curly brackets" in some less formal circles. [ ] are usually called "square brackets".

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