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The bracket system that separates what survives on a stone from what an editor supplied.
Also known as: Leiden system, Epigraphic conventions, Brackets in an ancient inscription, Symbols in a translated inscription
Agreed at Leiden in 1931, this is the notation that lets a printed inscription be honest. Each bracket type asserts something different about the physical state of the text, and the distinction between evidence and editorial conjecture is the entire point of the system.
A system of editorial brackets and marks for printing inscriptions and papyri, agreed at a congress in Leiden in 1931 and revised in practice since, in which each bracket type states a different relationship between the printed text and the surviving physical text.
Contexts: History
The distinction the system exists to preserve is between what is on the object and what the editor believes was on it. Collapsing the two turns conjecture into evidence, which is exactly the error the notation was invented to prevent.
Widely followed across classical epigraphy and papyrology and not applied uniformly. Editions vary, older ones especially, and an edition's own preface or list of sigla governs where it differs.
Check the edition's stated conventions before relying on a bracket's meaning.
A run of printed text broken up by square brackets, angle brackets, round brackets and braces, with dots placed beneath some letters.
The square bracket is the system's central mark.