[quote=@Captain Jordan]
[quote]The advantage of brackets are to differentiate code from text.[/quote]

Duh. That's the challenge. 
[/quote]
 Eeh... I sort of like to sometimes @ people without necessarily pinging them? Never mind all other occasions where the symbol might be used which will either create "empty" pings (the avoiding of which would be extra work for server) or ping someone who has no business being there. Happens often enough on some sites I'm on which also @-ping...

The brackets are there for the people even more so than the server, as I see it. So that things they don't want to be interpreted as BBCode, won't be. 

*stares disapprovingly at some programs which insist on bolding everything in asterisks*