Polarization identity

Over a field of characteristic other than two, a quadratic form recovers its symmetric bilinear form by

For a complex sesquilinear form $B$, the values $B(x,x)$ determine $B(x,y)$. In particular, expanding at $x+y$ and $x+iy$ shows that $B(x,x)=0$ for every $x$ implies $B=0$. Over the reals this conclusion can fail for nonsymmetric bilinear forms, as a nonzero skew-symmetric form has zero diagonal.