It appears, Sue, that the iPhone keyboard is not the same throughout the iPhone interface, or indeed inside Marvin. I'm referring to the newest iOS 7, too. According to the following article, the iPhone keyboard can have 18 different looks depending on where exactly on the iPhone it pops up:
http://shawnblanc.net/2009/05/iphone-keyboard-layouts
Inside Marvin, the curly braces {} are definitely there in iOS 7 even on the iPhone, for example whenever you edit a note inside Marvin. Please see the screenshot attached to this post. They are
not there when you're editing the custom menu button command in Marvin, although that's
especially where we need to see them.
Perhaps Kris can arrange that we get to see the same iPhone keyboard when editing the custom menu button commands, that we see when writing notes in Marvin. If Kris cannot arrange that, then perhaps a placeholder other than {} (or an
alternative placeholder
in addition to {}) would be a good solution.