Mathematics - Writing for Computer Science - page 132

Alphabets

Characters from the Greek alphabet provide a clear way of denoting variables and
mathematical quantities, as they cannot be confused with English text, and are widely
used for this purpose.
Most readers are familiar with only a fewGreek letters, so use of unfamiliar letters
should be minimized, if only because new notation should be minimized. Many peo-
ple find it easier to remember that a letter denotes a certain quantity if they already
know the name of the letter; if they do not know the name they invent one, but this
invention is generally not as effective a label as a real name. For example, reading
the statement “sets are denoted by

” might result in the thought sets are denoted by
alpha while reading “sets are denoted by

ʱ

” (zeta) might result in the thought sets
are denoted by a squiggle-that-looks-like-a-deformed-s . Other characters that have
this effect are the Greek letters

ʶ

.
Some mathematical symbols and characters from other alphabets have a super-
ficial resemblance to more familiar symbols. Some pairs that can cause confusion,
particularly after imperfect reproduction, shown in Table 9.1 .

ʾ and (xi), and symbols such as ℵ , , and

Line Breaks

Avoid letting a number, symbol, or abbreviation appear at the start of the line, par-
ticularly if it is the end of a sentence.

Table 9.1 Symbols that can
be confused with each other

Symbol Confused with

ʵ epsilon e

ʵ epsilon ∈ (element of)

ʷ eta n

ʹ iota i

μ mu u

ˁ rho p

˄ tau t

˅ upsilon v

ʽ nu v

ˉ omega w

∨ or v

∪ union U

∝ proportional ʱ alpha

top (of lattice)

T

∅ empty set 0 zero

× multiplication x