Angle-bracket enclosure is also used to indicate that a term stands
for some [124]random member of a larger class (this is straight from
[125]BNF). Examples like the following are common:
So this walks into a bar one day...

There is also an accepted convention for `writing under erasure'; the
text
Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman,
he's visiting from corporate HQ.

reads roughly as "Be nice to this fool, er, gentleman...", with irony
emphasized. The digraph ^H is often used as a print representation for
a backspace, and was actually very visible on old-style printing
terminals. As the text was being composed the characters would be
echoed and printed immediately, and when a correction was made the
backspace keystrokes would be echoed with the string '^H'. Of course,
the final composed text would have no trace of the backspace
characters (or the original erroneous text).

This convention parallels (and may have been influenced by) the ironic
use of `slashouts' in science-fiction fanzines.

A related habit uses editor commands to signify corrections to
previous text. This custom faded in email as more mailers got good
editing capabilities, only to tale on new life on IRCs and other
line-based chat systems.
I've seen that term used on alt.foobar often.
Send it to Erik for the File.
Oops...s/Erik/Eric/.