pdflatex with special characters

Question

I'm very new to LaTeX and run into some problems. I'm using Texmaker for windows with pdflatex btw.

When I use special characters and arrows etc. I would like to write it like this.

\wedge

But I have to write it like this

$\wedge$

Why is this ?

Now I would like to write [ and ] in my document. But neither of these examples work.

[
\[
$\[$

How can I write [ and ] in my document?

EDIT:

Here are some parts from my document.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{graphicx}
...
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
 [  &  this is a square bracket \\
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Maybe the problem is the table ? When I just write [ I get following error:

! Paragraph ended before \@argarraycr was complete.

---

EDIT 2: Here is a test document. This one I can not compile.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{colortbl}
\usepackage{graphicx}


\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{ll}
\{ / \}  &  test \\
[\{ / ]\}  &  test \\
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Answer 1

\wedge is a math mode character, as it's usually intended to show mathematical meaning. That's why you need to use math mode ($ ... $) to display it: this lets TeX sort out spacing in cases such as

$ A \wedge B $

You can use UTF-8 input directly with XeLaTeX to type in special characters. However, for mathematical characters, getting good font coverage can be hard. So it is often easier for these to stick to using math mode even with XeLaTeX.

---

One reason that you might not see [ is if it is used in a place where LaTeX looks for an optional argument. You can prevent LaTeX getting 'confused' by inserting an empty group ({}) or the 'do nothing' \relax primitive. A classic case is \item:

\item{} [
\item\relax [

Answer 2

Ok I found the problem. It was the \tabular

When you want to write a square bracket inside of a table, you have to use

{[}