
Poor Bat
I suppose it got toasted...
Still it good that the shuttle launched successfully.
Space shuttle Discovery yesterday docked with the International Space Station at 17:20 EDT (21:20 GMT), delivering the final solar arrays and associated truss segment to the orbiting outpost. The Discovery crew enter the ISS. Pic: NASA The STS-119 mission crew, comprising Commander Lee Archambault, Pilot Tony Antonelli, …
OK, a question for our Colonial cousins, what is it with you lot and square brackets in the middle of sentences? "provides support to the [Kennedy Space] center" reads just as well as "provides support to the Kennedy Space Center" because there aren't so many space centres (sorry, centers) around.
Can [someone] skilled in American English let us [all in] on the secret?
Square brackets are an editorial convention (and not just something in American English) indicating that the words contained in them have been added for clarity, but weren't in the original quote.
The quote would actually have been "provides support to the center" which would have made sense if the entire comment was printed in full, because, prior to that, the speaker would have referred to the "Kennedy Space Center", but subsequently just mentioned "the center" (ie it wouldn't be clear to the reader *which* center is being referred to without the full context) so the writer of the article adds [Kennedy Space] to make it clear.
Clear? :-)