ly suggests that both the hooks and
the curves are usual and appropriate signs of "_the parenthesis_." In
Garner's quarto Dictionary, the French word _Crochet_, as used by printers,
is translated, "_A brace, a crotchet, a parenthesis_;" and the English word
_Crotchet_ is defined, "The _mark_ of a _parenthesis_, in printing, thus [
]." But Webster defines _Crotchet_, "In printing, a _hook_ including words,
a _sentence_ or a _passage_ distinguished from the rest, thus []." This
again is both ambiguous and otherwise inaccurate. It conveys no clear idea
of what a crotchet is. _One_ hook _includes_ nothing. Therefore Johnson
said: "_Hooks_ in which words are included [thus]." But if each of the
hooks is a crotchet, as Webster suggests, and almost every body supposes,
then both lexicographers are wrong in not making the whole expression
plural: thus, "_Crotchets_, in printing, are angular _hooks_ usually
including some explanatory words." But is this all that Webster meant? I
cannot tell. He may be understood as saying also, that a _Crotchet_ is "_a
sentence_ or _a passage_ distinguished from the rest, thus [];" and
doubtless it would be much better to call a hint thus marked, a _crotchet_,
than to call it _a parenthesis_, as some have done. In Parker and Fox's
Grammar, and also in Parker's Aids to English Composition, the term
_Brackets_ only is applied to these angular hooks; and, contrary to all
usage of other authors, so far as I know, the name of _Crotchets_ is there
given to the _Curves_. And then, as if this application of the word were
general, and its propriety indisputable, the pupil is simply told: "The
_curved lines_ between which a parenthesis is enclosed are called
_Crotchets_."--_Gram._, Part III, p. 30; _Aids_, p. 40. "Called
_Crotchets_" by whom? That not even Mr. Parker himself knows them by that
name, the following most inaccurate passage is a proof: "The _note_ of
admiration _and_ interrogation, as also the _parenthesis_, the _bracket_,
and the reference marks, [are noted in the margin] in the same manner as
the apostrophe."--_Aids_, p. 314. In some late grammars, (for example,
_Hazen's_ and _Day's_,) the parenthetic curves are called "_the
Parentheses_" From this the student must understand that it always takes
_two parentheses_ to make _one parenthesis!_ If then it is objectionable,
to call the two marks "_a parenthesis_," it is much more so, to call each
of them by that name, or both "_the parentheses_." A