I learned it that way too, and I occasionally employ that usage.
Although if you are writing something so convoluted that you need parentheses within parentheses, it might be a better idea to rewrite it in a simpler fashion.
In writing equations by hand I’ll use () for the innermost set, [ and ] for the next innermost and { with } for the outermost. Beyond that, I’ll use heavier lines in the same order.
Does anyone use the pipe?
Separating | Words | With | A | Vertical | Line
Just in the middle of an ordinary sentence? What would it mean?
It is vaguely related to the solidus, but that functions as a separator (of lines of poetry, say), so you would use it as some sort of separator, e.g. a column separator as it were when putting information on a single line. Or in a scholarly/critical edition. There is also a “cantillation mark” in Hebrew which looks like a vertical line.
Only when wikilinking. Didn’t know what a “pipe” was until I got involved in Wikipedia.
I used pipes in SQL for concatenating alpha strings.
I use them in Christian music videos that my wife and I do, for the baked-in song / copyright statement that appears at the bottom at the beginning of the video. I use the pipe to separate various bits and pieces of the author and songwriter.
Example:
“Sweet Hour of Prayer”
William Batchelder Bradbury | William W. Walford
Words: Public Domain; Music: Public Domain
CCLI License# 12345678
It’s more a stylistic thing than anything.
Word will automatically convert double hyphens into dashes. I wouldn’t recommend using them anywhere without conversion. I always use hyphens online. They are perfectly fine for any use outside typesetting, IMO.
The solidus is the good, old-fashioned, forward slash [/]
The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS - an example of parenthesis) has some examples of why this might be necessary, especially in more academic contexts. One example (shortened below).
(see Davis, Discoveries [New York: Babbington Press], pp. 74-82)
Other uses for brackets:
- to enclose the phonetic transcript of a word - mapcase [máp kɛ́js]
- to include the full name of an author - E[xapno] Mapcase
- for pseudonyms - Mark Twain [Samuel Clemons] or Brontë, Charlotte [Currer Bell, pseud.]
- to add the date of a publication not in the original - What’s the difference? [2024]
And bunches more that are even more technical. Most of them would fall under the general banner of editorial interpolations.
If they’re used arbitrarily today, it’s probably because they make no difference in the real world outside of rigidly formal contexts. And those should already come with style guides. Even my four decade old CMS agrees that parentheses, commas, and dashes are often interchangeable.
It is a “pipe” in a very specific context related to computer operating systems, but that should not necessarily mean anything to a Wikipedia editor. Do the instructions really call it a pipe?
ETA I have seen computer “pipes” sometimes written ¦ , deliberately not a simple vertical bar.
That’s the marking on my computer keyboard, although again Word automatically converts it.
Also in Sanskrit, I should have added. Probably others.
Yes it’s for wiki linking, to allow an editor to customise the link for the particular context.
Wikipedia uses wiki-text, which has coding options incorporated.
To link to a Wikipedia article, you take the name of the article and put it in double square brackets. That will render as a link to that article, by the name.
So if I’m writing an article about recent Canadian politics, and I refer to the 2021 Canadian federal election, I enclose the article name in double square brackets; [[2021 Canadian federal election]]. That will render as 2021 Canadian federal election, underlined to show it’s a hypertext link to the article by that name.
But suppose I’m well into the discussion and I’ve already made it clear earlier in the paragraph that I’m discussing the Canadian federal election of that year and now I want to put in the link. “2021 Canadian federal election” is too long and clunky for my sentence, and redundant. The reader already knows I’m talking about the Canadian federal election.
So I use square brackets for the link, and a pipe to customise it. I write: [[2021 Canadian federal election|2021 election]]. That will show in the sentence as a short hyperlink: 2021 election. If the readers click on the link, it takes them to the article on the 2021 Canadian federal election.
I think that, since comments inside of parentheses are known as parenthetical remarks, editorial comments inside of brackets should be known as brackethetical remarks.
The point I am trying to make is, that usage sounds less like a “pipe” per se than a vertical bar, and people may not even know what a pipe means.
I looked at the help text, and what it says is
Use a vertical bar “|” (the “pipe” symbol)…
One thing to watch out for is when some application treats things inside square brackets as either a formatting command or comment and doesn’t show it in the text the reader will see. I can’t remember where I’ve seen this, but I know I’ve seen it in some message board.
… or external reference.
Interesting!
True, but almost everything automatically converts double hyphens to dashes. For example, iOS and anything that uses standard “markdown”, like Discourse. I have to type “\-\-“ to get “--“ in a post here.
Word - or at least, my settings - converts any single hyphen to a dash if it has a space before and after it.
Brackets are understood to be comments inserted by someone other than the author. Curly brackets are used only for math equations.