"Put a loop on the q, to avoid confusion with 9" yet the given example looks like a (badly drawn) 8 to me
Yes, a tick up and right at the bottom of the q's tail is clearer.
Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
11–20 of 79 posts
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#12Loop your l's, and cross your sevens and your z's to avoid confusing them with ones and twos. Exaggerate the differences between your i's and your j's by looping your j's. Curve the base of your t's to avoid confusing them with f's. Math is a lot harder to do when you cannot distinguish your variables from each other and numbers.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#13"Put a loop on the q, to avoid confusion with 9" yet the given example looks like a (badly drawn) 8 to me
Yeah. Cross your q's instead.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#14"Put a loop on the capital O so it doesn’t look like a zero" I do no put loops on O's, but to this day I have a habit of writing a stroke (in forward slash direction) inside zero.
But now it looks like a Theta!
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#15I wish we'd been taught this in high school. One habit I did learn in high school is writing x as two 'c' shapes in a mirror image. This is clearly an x rather than a multiplication symbol. I prefer it to the version listed in the article. I find it hard to distinguish the author's X/χ
X written as )( is the absolute worst. It always looks like two parenthesis when I'm grading student writing and I have no idea how to parse what they write.
In high school my teacher preferred that to distinguish it from the multiplication symbol. These days I write it as a times with a hook at the top-left to distinguish (a la most cursive styles, but disjointed), with the added bonus that I write uvwxyz all with the same top-left hook that helps visually group them together, matching their typical role in mathematical writing.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#16I wish we'd been taught this in high school. One habit I did learn in high school is writing x as two 'c' shapes in a mirror image. This is clearly an x rather than a multiplication symbol. I prefer it to the version listed in the article. I find it hard to distinguish the author's X/χ
at some point in math you'll never use x for times/multiplication -- you'll always use a dot, unless you're specifically doing a cross product. And that is a good stage to reach. (I still have trouble using x for multiplication though.)
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#17I wish we'd been taught this in high school. One habit I did learn in high school is writing x as two 'c' shapes in a mirror image. This is clearly an x rather than a multiplication symbol. I prefer it to the version listed in the article. I find it hard to distinguish the author's X/χ
> One habit I did learn in high school is writing x as two 'c' shapes in a mirror image. This is clearly an x rather than a multiplication symbol. I prefer it to the version listed in the article.
This is an unbelievably ugly handwriting quirk which is sadly prevalent in some European countries.
If you do this the ghosts of dead calligraphers will come puke on your paper.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#18Do we need everyone to memorize these guidelines or do we need an alphabet that is designed to be naturally distinguishable despite stylistic differences? I feel like with cursive and handwriting focus going out of style, it isn’t practical to expect convention to be followed more strictly than it already is(n’t).
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#19The response from a(nother) mathematician: don't worry too much about this specific advice; it's one guy's convention, not dogma. But do have very definite conventions of your own to which you adhere carefully and faithfully, whether they're this author's or anyone else's, or your own custom blend. As the author mentions, too many undergraduates don't pay attention to distinctions among similar-but-different symbols,…
I agree, I managed to make it through a PhD in physics and I never had a problem. Neither do I recall any of my class mates having a problem with hand written notation.
Re: Tips for Mathematical Handwriting (2007)
#20Loop your l's, and cross your sevens and your z's to avoid confusing them with ones and twos. Exaggerate the differences between your i's and your j's by looping your j's. Curve the base of your t's to avoid confusing them with f's. Math is a lot harder to do when you cannot distinguish your variables from each other and numbers.
I go a little further on my i's. i for the imaginary unit looks very different from i for indexing.