Pronunciation advice, please

[RB-TX]

In reading nonfiction, I occasionally come across the symbol [ ]. I don't even know what they are called; I just call them square brackets. Anyway, they appear with a word between them,as in the sentence, "It was a [great] achievement". Other times they bracket only the first letter of a word, as in, "It was a [g]reat achievement."

My questions are:
1. What significance does the bracketed word have?
2. What significance does the bracketed letter have?
3. What are the square brackets called?

I don't even know what question to use to look this up in a search engine.

Thanks

 

[raybar]

Square brackets usually enclose word(s) that do not appear in the original when something is quoted.

An ellipsis ( ... ) should be used to indicate when something is omitted from a quotation.

 

[Dancing_Queen]

In reading nonfiction, I occasionally come across the symbol [ ]. I don't even know what they are called; I just call them square brackets. Anyway, they appear with a word between them,as in the sentence, "It was a [great] achievement". Other times they bracket only the first letter of a word, as in, "It was a [g]reat achievement."

My questions are:
1. What significance does the bracketed word have?
2. What significance does the bracketed letter have?
3. What are the square brackets called?

I don't even know what question to use to look this up in a search engine.

Thanks

Raybar is right, RB. Something else you might see is [sic]. This is used when someone is quoting, but there's something wrong with the quote (usually grammar or spelling). The insertion [sic] is used to show that this actually was the original and not a copying mistake.

 

[drifter]

I would not have thought to asked that question, yet I learned something by you asking @RB-TX. Thanks.

 

[Murrmurr]

In this one, "It was a [g]reat achievement", the writer inadvertintly left off the "g".

 

[Della]

nevermind