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From: "Lenderink, dr. E." <lenderin@natlab.research.philips.com>
Subject: Re: Slashes and square brackets [was: Re: problems with pronunciation]
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comm@zeus.bris.ac.uk wrote:
> 
> Ross Smith (ross.smith@nz.eds.com) wrote:
> : This thread seems to have drifted a bit. Did anyone ever explain what
> : the difference between slashes and square brackets actually is? I've
> : always wondered about that myself.
> 
> Really? You mean that you don't know the difference between a slash ( / )
> and a square bracket (two kinds, open [ and close ] )? Really? What do you
> call those three characters? As pure ASCII they should come across OK on
> almost any news reader. As should the backslash ( \ ). All these must be
> on every computer keyboard, so you must either have failed to see them or
> used other names for them. What names, and why?
> 

There's no need to start yelling at him. Of course Ross knows the 
difference between a slash and a square bracket. I think his question was 
what they MEAN, more specifically when they are used as delimiters for 
phonetically rendered words. (Note that the original thread was about 
pronunciation problems.)

All I can say about the subject:
In all printed matter that I ever read, the square brackets are used for 
this purpose. I found that on the Usenet the slashes are used almost 
exclusively. I don't know why, but I could think of two possible reasons:
(1) the brackets are used for something else in Usenet messages, but I 
have not been able to find out for what;
(2) the slashes are used to indicate that the ASCII phonetic alphabet is 
used (/mEZ@:/ for measure), the brackets being reserved for the standard 
phonetic alphabet ([m<epsilon><hooked z><inverted e>:] for measure).

Anyone who can comment on this?

Egbert.

-- 

This message reflects my personal opinions only, not necessarily those 
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