A short word on nomenclature

These symbols have accepted names (in the context of programming):

• [ ] These are opening and closing brackets. They are square, so are sometimes called square brackets.
• { } These are opening and closing braces. You could call them curly braces, but there’s no need.
• ( ) Theses are parentheses. One is a parenthesis. If those are a bit of a mouth- or keyboardful, call it paren and parens. Don’t call these brackets or I’ll destroy your keyboard.
• ~ This is a tilde.
• | This is a pipe.

These symbols have multiple accepted names.

• # I call this a hash because I’m British. Americans call it a pound sign. Pedants call it an octothorpe.
• * Asterisk, star, splat. Definitely not an “asterix”.
• ! Exclamation mark/point, bang.
• < > Less-than and greater-than, but may also be called angle brackets.
• . Full-stop, period, dot.
• ? Question mark, query.