Talk:Caret (proofreading)

Hat

Does anyone really call it a "hat"? I've never heard it referred to it that way before 24.254.155.68 (talk) 00:23, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

TeX does: \hat creates a circumflex accent above the subsequent symbol.  // stpasha »  22:27, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

In unit vector notation in linear algebra an i with a caret is called "i-hat." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.162.222.142 (talk) 22:10, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I have also heard the sign ^ called "roof" (I don't know how common this is, but I can understand why they call it that). --Zzo38 (talk) 04:14, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Maybe in the US where few people are familiar with circumflexes, 'hat' is a reasonable nickname because that is what it looks like. OTOH, to call it a Caron is just wrong because that is a free-standing symbol. See also hat operator in maths and stats. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 11:10, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Caret Browsing

What about the expression "caret browsing" used for instance to describe in Firefox the functionality triggered by F7 function key ? Ptyxs (talk) 08:14, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Pronouced?

Pronounciation ~ carrot? 86.128.51.192 20:07, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Internet use

What about its use on internet forums, where it can be used to indicate the post is a reply to a previous post, usually determined by the number of carets, e.g. "^^^I Agree,but..." means the poster agrees with what was posted three posts back, not counting the new post. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.83.36.205 (talk • contribs)

Oh so that's what the number of ^ means. I've always used any number of ^. Didn't know that meant how many posts back to look at. - M0rphzone (talk) 01:00, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Isn't > more common?

I would say that it is very commonly used on internet forums to denote who you're replying to, without actually quoting them. I don't see > very much Hollerama 11:08, 19 September 2006 (PST)

I'd say it also means something like woot or: "I strongly agree with this opinion". Virtually every second youtube comment uses ^^. May be it is some form of leet or of emoticon?--Soylentyellow 20:41, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

It's not a leet or emoticon if used by itself. (^-^) is one of the ways it can be used in emoticons though. - M0rphzone (talk) 01:00, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

I've always thought of "^^" or simply "^" as "I agree with the above comment" since it looks a bit like an up arrow 24.254.155.68 (talk) 00:23, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

^.^ ^_^ ^-^ ^o^ ^w^ ^^ *^.^* *^_^* Are all types of Emoticon i suppose, Normally to show a Cute smile, or I'm happy to see you Face, Commonly used in Forums, Blogs, Messenger Programs, E-mails Etc. Why isn't that added into there? The Online use for '^' ? NekoKiyo (talk) 13:27, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Math use

What about its mathematical use for exponents?

Isn't this used as a "to the power of" kinda thing? It is used, and superscript notation is obsolete! PiotrGrochowski000 (talk) 07:05, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, it is used where superscript is not available, or sometimes where computer-parsing of expressions is required. It is not used for displayed formulas when formatting is available. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:13, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

carat

I consider the claim

sometimes spelled carat

dubious.

To my knowledge, this is a misspelling, not an alternate spelling. 88.77.152.227 (talk) 02:32, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Not only squares

The use of ^2 for squaring is only a special case of the more general x^y notation for the y-th power of x. Also, ^ is sometimes used for other mathematical or logical operators, such as xor. 88.238.107.74 (talk) 05:10, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

About its math notation use.

Since people have asked about its use to donate mathematic exponents, it's used to donate those when superscript can't be feasibly used (i.e. on low-tech internet forums). CrashGordon94 (talk) 09:57, 14 November 2011 (UTC) NOT! Superscripts are obsolete! Caret is used now! PiotrGrochowski000 (talk) 07:07, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

The use of the caret for exponentiation can be traced back to ALGOL 60?

According to the ALGOL 60 page, ∧ was actually used for the AND operator (and ∨ for OR), which looks closer to the caret than the upward-pointing arrow, as the text describes it: “[ALGOL 60] which expressed the exponentiation operator as an upward-pointing arrow, intended to evoke the superscript notation common in mathematics”. This whole sentence thus seems a bit incoherent. DidierLoiseau (talk) 17:54, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Meaning Text Cursor

There should be something here about the fact that the flashing marker in most text editors is also referred to as the caret. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.33.179.133 (talk) 13:07, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

That's mentioned at Caret (disambiguation) and has its own article. I'm not really sure it's worth mentioning here because the hatnote is already bloated enough and can't be expected to duplicate the whole disambiguation page. Not to mention that it's not about the '^' character itself. Opencooper (talk) 18:07, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

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Circumflex is not a caret

@Spitzak: This article is about actual caret signs, not something else. Recognising wp:common name and all that, but U+005E is not a caret, it is a circumflex. It just got called a caret by monolingual programmers in the US, because US English never sees any words that have a circumflex diacritic. Rather than just revert your edit first, per WP:BRD, let's discuss first. What I propose is that the article have a hatnote that reads something like this:

This article is about the proofreader's marks to indicate an insertion. For the circumflex sign, ^, often incorrectly called a caret, see Circumflex.

Not to be confused with carat.

Comments? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 22:54, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

You will have to move the entire programming section to that article, and change dozens of links from the word "caret" and the character '^' to there, so I don't think that is a good idea. And there is a serious problem that the word "caret" probably means this character far more often than proofreading marks, so the page is pretty much not matching common naming.Spitzak (talk) 01:54, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

But it is still wrong. Wikipedia should not be in the business of reinforcing errors. Yes, the error is widespread in the IT world and so should be recorded as such, but that does make it valid. This is not a style argument like whether the possessive case of singular words ending in ⟨s⟩ should take another s after the apostrophe. It is more like the recording the misunderstanding that leads to phrases like "I would of gone" instead of "would have gone".

If that means a lot of articles need repair then so be it. I will have to do that. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 07:27, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

On reflection, I can see that that idea would be a thankless task and would almost certainly be reverted. Dictionaries record "English as she is speaked" – what is, rather than what should be – so we have to do the same thing. But as this is a typography article, let's at least lay down solid foundations and then expose this as an evolution of language rather than just take it as read. So I have edited the article accordingly.--John Maynard Friedman (talk) 08:20, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

"english as she is speaked" trumps all. if the majority of intelligent, educated, speakers are using it in this new way, it is not really "incorrect" any longer.

rather than invite trouble, might i suggest you reword your version "for the diacritic colloquially known as a carat, see..." or "...often referred to as a carat, see...", rather than using "incorrect" per se. other pages handle things this way. 66.30.47.138 (talk) 22:47, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

The 'intro' in italics no longer describes it as "incorrect". It now says simply that the article is about the proofreader's symbols that indicate insertion, and about a similar symbol used in computing. Or were you referring to something currently in the article? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:52, 10 June 2021 (UTC)