# Why a symbol starting with a number needs to be between brackets?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-a-symbol-starting-with-a-number-needs-to-be-between-brackets/55901>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Created:** [February 24, 2021, 12:38am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-a-symbol-starting-with-a-number-needs-to-be-between-brackets/55901 "2021-02-24T00:38:10Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![pdeffebach](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/pdeffebach/32/10320_2.png) [@pdeffebach](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/pdeffebach)\
**Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 12:48am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/why-a-symbol-starting-with-a-number-needs-to-be-between-brackets/55901/2 "2021-02-24T00:48:16Z")

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it’s a parsing thing, I’m not sure why but `:1` gets parsed as `1`, so it tries to do `1 * day`.

You want `Symbol("1day")`, as `:(1day)` is creating an expression, which is different.

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