Parenthesis in Queries

Is there a way to turn off the need to use parenthesis in queries for table names etc.  I have seen in some
documentationexamples that parenthesis are not used in the queries.  In my install of postgre 7.4 I get an error when I
donot use them. 

Example with parenthesis which works in my build
select * from portal."User"

where I would like to use
select * from portal.User

Thanks
Tim