The idea of a square meal goes back to the 1800s and possibly mining towns, but the word "square" itself has a longer history. Plus, admit it! You don't know how to use curly braces. (We didn't either, but we figured it out.) | Subscribe to the newsletter for regular updates. |Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing course. |Peeve Wars card game. |Grammar Girl books. |HOST: Mignon Fogarty |VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475) |Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network. |Theme music by Catherine Rannus at beautifulmusic.co.uk. |Links: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/ https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/podcasts https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/subscribe https://www.tiktok.com/@therealgrammargirl http://twitter.com/grammargirl http://facebook.com/grammargirl http://facebook.com/grammargirl http://instagram.com/thegrammargirl https://www.linkedin.com/company/grammar-girl
The idea of a square meal goes back to the 1800s and possibly mining towns, but the word "square" itself has a longer history. Plus, admit it! You don't know how to use curly braces. (We didn't either, but we figured it out.)
| Subscribe to the newsletter for regular updates.
|Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing course.
|HOST: Mignon Fogarty
|VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475)
|Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.
|Theme music by Catherine Rannus at beautifulmusic.co.uk.
|Links:
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/podcasts
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/subscribe
https://www.tiktok.com/@therealgrammargirl
http://twitter.com/grammargirl
http://facebook.com/grammargirl
http://facebook.com/grammargirl
http://instagram.com/thegrammargirl
https://www.linkedin.com/company/grammar-girl
Grammar Girl here. I’m Mignon Fogarty, and you can think of me as your friendly guide to the English language. We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.
Today, we're going to talk about three punctuation marks: one you undoubtedly know how to use, another you possibly misuse, and then another you’ve likely never used, and then we investigate what actually makes a square meal square and not round or trapezoid.
Parentheses, Brackets, and Braces
You’re probably well versed in the basics of how to use those sideways eyebrow thingies, better known as parentheses, but the details can get tricky.
First, remember that a pair of them is called “parentheses,” but a single one is a “parenthesis.”
For now, let’s just say that parentheses mainly enclose information that isn't vital to a sentence. But you may want to review the episode in which we compared parentheses to dashes and commas because dashes and commas can separate things that aren't vital to a sentence too, but the different ways of setting off information do have differences. But no matter what you put inside parentheses, one important thing to remember is that your sentence still has to make sense if you delete them and everything inside. And although you are allowed to put both partial sentences and complete sentences inside parentheses, you shouldn't put more than a whole paragraph inside, according to Garner's Modern English Usage. (1)
One thing people often wonder is how to use terminal punctuation marks with parentheses. Well, if your sentence starts with an opening parenthesis, and what’s inside your parentheses is a complete sentence, then the terminal punctuation mark, such as a period, question mark, or exclamation point, goes inside the closing parenthesis: “(I knew he wouldn’t want to do that.)” For example, if you wrote, "I knew he wouldn't want to do that" inside parentheses, the period goes at the end of the sentence, after the word "that," and inside the closing parenthesis. On the other hand, if what’s inside the parentheses is only a partial sentence, then you put the terminal punctuation outside instead, for example, if you wrote, “I moved to America when I was 10 (in 1980).” For example, if you wrote, "I moved to American when I was 10" and then put "in 1980" in parentheses, you put the period after that closing parenthesis because "in 1980" isn't a complete sentence.
For the most part, these two rules seem fairly easy to understand—complete sentence: terminal punctuation inside; partial sentence: terminal punctuation outside. But when you have a sentence that contains another complete sentence within parentheses, the punctuation can get confusing. Let’s say you want to add the complete sentence “I can’t believe it!” inside parentheses within another complete sentence. In this case, the exclamation point would go inside the closing parenthesis and then a period would go outside: “I ate the whole box of donuts (I can’t believe it!).”
That is the correct way to do it, but I often recommend simply losing the parentheses and making that sentence a complete sentence on its own that follows the first sentence. "I ate the whole box of donuts. I can't believe it!" It's always good to make sure you have a good reason for putting something in parentheses.
Square Brackets
Now it’s time to introduce our potentially misused friends: square brackets. These brackets, which are one long line short of a standing-up rectangle, appear on the keyboard to the right of the letter P. They are less common than their parenthetical cousins, although you do sometimes see both punctuation marks within the same sentence.
The Associated Press never uses brackets because their system can't transmit them, so if you're a newspaper writer, you're free from the rules of this section.
For everyone else, one time to use brackets is when you want to put parentheses within parentheses. Since two parentheses in a row would be confusing, you bookend your parentheses with brackets. So, the order is opening parenthesis, opening bracket, closing bracket, closing parenthesis. For example, you would write “They are getting married (they love each other [of course!]).” Now that definitely looks clunky, but you could occasionally have a stylistic reason for wanting to do it that way. For example, maybe you're writing dialogue for a scatterbrained character in a novel.
Square brackets are also a good way for editors to include comments in a document. (2) The square brackets make comments stand out since they're so rarely used for other things.
A related way to use brackets is if you need to add a comment to clarify something in a quotation.
For example, if you are in a scholarly field, you may find yourself writing a paper and needing to directly quote an expert but also realizing you need to clarify what the expert said, and this is where it gets tricky. Some writers will replace a section of a quotation with text in brackets to make it more clear, but some professionals suggest that it's better to add a clarification instead of replacing text. For example, let's say you have a quotation that reads, “This enterprising paleontologist discovered a new species of plant eater,” and you need to tell your readers who the enterprising paleontologist actually is. You could change it to “[Margo Figueroa] discovered a new species of plant eater.” with "Margo Figueroa" in brackets replacing "This enterprising paleontologist," but it would be better to add the name in brackets after the description, writing instead, “This enterprising paleontologist [Margo Figueroa] discovered a new species of plant eater.” (2, 3)
And note also that you shouldn't use parentheses around the name you add, even though you might be tempted, because it would seem—incorrectly—like an aside that appeared in the original text because it's in a quotation.
You may have also seen a quotation where just the first capital letter of the first word is in brackets. That pops up when a writer is quoting someone, but starts in the middle of a sentence, so the exact quotation doesn't include a capital letter. This level of precision isn't usually necessary according to both Garner's Modern English Usage and the Chicago Manual of Style, but if your work requires you to be “rigorously accurate,” as Garner's puts it, you can put that first capital letter in brackets to show that the way you have written it isn't exactly as it was in the original. For example, if the quoted word is “it,” with a lowercase I, and a rigorously accurate scholar wanted the word “it” to start a sentence, it would be written bracket-uppercase I-bracket-lowercase T: “[I]t.”
You can also use brackets to note when something is missing in a text. For example, if you're quoting from an old handwritten document, and a word is worn away, you can write "illegible" in brackets in place of that word. (4)
Note though that this is different from using an ellipsis—those three dots we talked about a couple of months ago—which you use when you are deleting words from a direct quotation. The ellipsis shows that you've made an editorial decision to omit text, whereas something like an "illegible" comment in brackets shows that something wasn't able to be included.
The last place you are likely to encounter square brackets is around the Latin word “sic,” S-I-C, which means “thus.” You use it—in italics—when you’re quoting someone who has made an error, such as a spelling mistake. You should use bracket-sic-bracket only when absolutely necessary to aid readers (5); you don’t want to show off or seem pedantic by constantly pointing out others’ failings. In fact, the most recent edition of the AP Stylebook says never to use it. Instead, if you're tempted, they say to paraphrase the quotation instead.
Braces
Our last foray into punctuation marks leads us to what are known as curly braces. To type one, press the shift key as you punch the bracket key, to the right of the letter P. I must say I have never used curly braces. In fact, although they look like punctuation marks, they really aren’t (6), at least not in the way you can type them yourself.
They’re on your keyboard because they have specialized uses in mathematics and science. For example, they are used to enclose the third level of nested equations when parentheses and brackets have already been used for the first two levels. (7)
And big curly braces that span multiple lines are sometimes used to enclose groups of words that belong together (8) or triplet lines in poetry, but your keyboard doesn’t have those big curly braces that span multiple lines.
Summary
So today we've learned how to use various curved, square, and curly squiggles within your sentences. Be sure to keep them straight!
That segment was written by Bonnie Mills, who has been a copy editor since 1996.
Square Meal
Did you have a square meal? If someone asks you that question, they are referring to a healthy, balanced, satisfying meal. If you ate only candy, pretzels, or ice cream, then you did not have a square meal. But why is the word “square” used to describe a filling, nutritious meal?
An oft-repeated story about the etymology of the term "square meal" has been that in the 1700s sailors in the British Royal Navy ate their meals off square wooden plates or trays called trenchers. A trencher was a square piece of wood with a large carved out circular depression in the center for food and a smaller depression in one corner for holding salt. While it is true that, at one time, plates of that shape and substance were used, there isn’t any evidence that the term "square meal" came from that practice. Neither "The Sailor’s Word Book" nor the Oxford English Dictionary connects the origin or usage of “square meal” to the Royal Navy and sailors eating off of trenchers.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, using the word "square" as an adjective dates back to the 1500s, and it meant "just, equitable, or honest." A person or action that was straightforward, true, or fair was “square.” In competitions, we want the rules to be "fair and square" for all involved. We want a "square deal" in matters pertaining to work, business, and life in general. Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, who served as president of the United States from 1901 to 1909, often used "square deal" to describe his policies promoting the fair treatment of everybody. In the mid-1800s the phrase "square meal" started to be used in the United States and referred to a meal that was filling and substantial because it was well-balanced with all the sustenance a person needed.
In the June 1865 issue of the "New Harper’s Monthly Magazine," J. Ross Browne described what a “square meal” consisted of in the mining town of Virginia City, Nevada. Browne was a world traveler, federal employee, and writer. On one of his trips through the Washoe Valley he saw an advertisement that he told his readers would "send a thrill of astonishment through your brain." The ad he saw, which he quoted word-for-word, read as follows:
LOOK HERE! For fifty cents YOU CAN GET A GOOD SQUARE MEAL at the HOWLING WILDERNESS SALOON!”
Browne then described that "square meal" as "not, as may be supposed, a meal placed upon the table in the form of a solid cubic block, but a substantial repast of pork and beans, onions, cabbage, and other articles of sustenance that will serve to fill up the corners of a miner’s stomach."
A “repast” is a meal, and the one described by Browne, though it was a "square meal" by 1865 miners’ standards, might not strike our modern sensibilities and palates as one that we would line up with excitement to eat. Browne’s description also leaves one wondering what those "other articles of sustenance" might have been.
J. Ross Browne did not invent the term "square meal" though, nor was he the first to use it. In a California newspaper titled "Georgetown News," a letter to the editor appeared on February 7, 1856, that said anyone coming to the town of Newtown in El Dorado County should "call at the United States Hotel . . . to get a square meal." In the July 23, 1857 issue of the "Mariposa (California) Democrat," an advertisement inviting people to a camp meeting said, "Three square meals per day will be furnished." That same year the phrase "square meal" appeared in the "New-York Dispatch." None of those articles explained what a "square meal" was, so it seems the term had already been in use before it began appearing in print, and people understood what it meant.
For many of us, the contents of what qualified as a "square meal" back in the 1800s might not be what we envision or hope for today. However, but the general, basic meaning of “square meal” remains the same. A "square meal" is a balanced provision of nutritious food that fills and satisfies. Because "square" describes someone or something that is fair or just, it makes sense that a "square meal" doesn’t cheat people out of the sustenance they need.
That segment was written by Brenda Thomas, a freelance writer and online educator.
Finally, I have a familect story about a girl name Eliana.
"Hello, Grammar Girl. I have a familect story for you. When my middle daughter was about 17 months old, she had her own word to signify a long warm outer garment. We're preparing to go outside when she asked to put on her 'guck.' My husband looked her in the eye and said 'Eliana say "coat,"' emphasizing the wayward consonants. She looked him straight in the eye and responded with the utmost sincerity 'Guck.' That's what she heard. That's what she repeated. So now 'guck' is our family's word for 'coat.' Thank you for your podcast. I really enjoy it."
Thank you for the call! I actually ran your story by Valerie Fridland, the linguist who wrote the segment a few shows ago about how children acquire language, and she tells me your daughter was probably doing something that linguists call assimilation, which just means changing sounds to make them more like other sounds that are easier for them to make. So "guck" was easier for her to say with the sounds she was already able to make than using the sounds she would have to put together in the word "coat." It's the same reason kids often say "kiki" for "kitty." Thanks again!
If you want to call with your familect story, the story of a word your family and only your family uses, we include the number for the voicemail line in every weekly Grammar Girl newsletter, so sign up for the newsletter to get the phone number in your inbox. And you can sign up for that at Quick and Dirty Tips dot com.
I’m Mignon Fogarty, better known as Grammar Girl.
Thanks to my audio engineer, Nathan Semes, and my editor, Adam Cecil. Our assistant manager is Emily Miller, whose nephew will be two years old next week. Happy birthday, Parker. And our marketing and publicity assistant is Davina Tomlin.
That’s all. Thanks for listening.
References for the parentheses segment