# Retag? (“braces” and “brackets”)

Is there any kind of sensible difference between the tags and ? If not, probably should be made a synonym for ; if so, the wikis need to explain it better, especially due to the ambiguity/regional variation in the meaning of "brackets": it can refer not only to {} and [], but also to (), or even <>(!) (but hopefully not here, as we have the proper \langle and \rangle at our disposal). (For U.K. readers: mentally rearrange the appearances of the delimiter pairs above to suit.)

I think was originally created for things like \underbrace or big braces next to text. As such I think we can make it as synonym of , but I would keep the tag about typesetting braces/brackets/parentheses/...

For the TeX source code symbol (that you are describing in your proposed tag wiki edit), maybe we should introduce ? That would cover the catcode 1 and 2 symbols, as well as \bgroup etc.

• No, "grouping" wouldn't cover it; the symbols are also used for delimiting arguments and macro bodies (and likely for other things) which do not involve grouping. – SamB Feb 16 '11 at 0:17
• I do agree that it is desirable to have distinct tags for the two things, though; I just don't think "grouping" is a good name for the tag about the syntactical braces, and I can't really think of a good new name for either half of the existing tag, except maybe "brace-symbols" for the kind that appear on paper... – SamB Feb 16 '11 at 0:26