You're right, of course. I, especially, should not fall into a regionalistic trap like that. but, on the other hand, I will cheerfully risk begin viewed as "pretentious" if that's the result of an effort to communicate clearly, in the language of the listener or reader.

But, for my info, how does UK-English distinguish among parens, squarebrackets, angle-brackets and curly-brackets? (others offering distinctive regionalisms or national-useages encouraged too!)

and, for what LITTLE it's worth, I do not recall hearing (as a child in Edinburgh) any teacher referring to "" as speech-marks.

I will cheerfully risk begin viewed as "pretentious" if that's the result of an effort to communicate clearly, in the language of the listener or reader.

Oh, that's fair enough &mdash you're allowed to do that yourself, and in a Perl forum I agree with you and personally would say "parens" — but it seems a bit off to try and force pretentiousness on others!

how does UK-English distinguish among parens, squarebrackets, angle-brackets and curly-brackets?

(...)	brackets
[...]	square brackets
<...>	angle brackets or angled brackets or pointy brackets (no real standard term, as they don't occur much as punctuation symbols in everyday life, outside of computer coding)
{...}	braces

Smylers