If ure not doing coding or academic language (or a few other niche industry uses), don't bother, you shouldn't.
If you're doing academic or journalistic writing, there are so many required parenthesis all over the place, so they have a bunch of rules that you need to use brackets for certain things instead, depending on the system. If I remember my APA right, it's square brackets when citing within a sentence within parenthesis (like this [vicious_snek6, 2026]) or like this when introducing an abbreviation in a citation (Kotaku in action 2 [KIA2], 2026) or "when you have a quote and you wanna flex on their mispelling [sic]" which of course means their entire argument is wrong. And about 100 other stupid little rules that are far less useful.
It's still a mess and horrible to read, but the square brackets do help keep it cleaner, and signal that something other than usual parenthetical information is happening, there's a system.
If you are getting to the point where you think it might be useful because you have a lot of parenthesis already, just fix your writing, don't use square brackets.
Completely different usages between language, programming, and mathematics.
There's already a comment on the first two. Math's got a dozen uses for (). Intervals (exclusive), function arguments, coordinates, order of operation change, etc. Brackets get used for intervals (inclusive), matrices, and probably some things I've forgotten. Braces get used heavily in set notation.
tl;dr: Every discipline with its own notation found uses for all three.
I have a better idea. All jews should be labeled as being jewish by having three brackets surrounding their legal name (((like this))).
And also, wear a yellow arm band with a special six pointed star on it. ;)
Parenthesis: ( )
Brackets: [ ]
Braces: { }
Whats the purpose of each? When would I use braces vs brackets?
If ure not doing coding or academic language (or a few other niche industry uses), don't bother, you shouldn't.
If you're doing academic or journalistic writing, there are so many required parenthesis all over the place, so they have a bunch of rules that you need to use brackets for certain things instead, depending on the system. If I remember my APA right, it's square brackets when citing within a sentence within parenthesis (like this [vicious_snek6, 2026]) or like this when introducing an abbreviation in a citation (Kotaku in action 2 [KIA2], 2026) or "when you have a quote and you wanna flex on their mispelling [sic]" which of course means their entire argument is wrong. And about 100 other stupid little rules that are far less useful.
It's still a mess and horrible to read, but the square brackets do help keep it cleaner, and signal that something other than usual parenthetical information is happening, there's a system.
If you are getting to the point where you think it might be useful because you have a lot of parenthesis already, just fix your writing, don't use square brackets.
You forgot to mention that the rules most likely change between languages too.
Brackets are for indexing arrays and vectors, and braces are for declaring a change in scope.
I will see myself out
Completely different usages between language, programming, and mathematics.
There's already a comment on the first two. Math's got a dozen uses for (). Intervals (exclusive), function arguments, coordinates, order of operation change, etc. Brackets get used for intervals (inclusive), matrices, and probably some things I've forgotten. Braces get used heavily in set notation.
tl;dr: Every discipline with its own notation found uses for all three.
I do I fake typo "j" because it gets passed any algorithms.
Medja
Edjucation
Medjcine