Timeline for Beginning a sentence with a mathematical symbol
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
22 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 21, 2019 at 13:30 | review | Close votes | |||
| Mar 21, 2019 at 17:02 | |||||
| Oct 11, 2017 at 12:12 | review | Close votes | |||
| Oct 11, 2017 at 21:01 | |||||
| May 16, 2010 at 19:34 | comment | added | Kim Morrison | I've hit this question with the wiki hammer. Any question that comes down to "who has strong opinions about X?" should be wiki, please. | |
| May 16, 2010 at 19:33 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Kim Morrison | ||
| May 16, 2010 at 7:52 | answer | added | Robin Chapman | timeline score: 15 | |
| May 16, 2010 at 4:47 | comment | added | Matt | I personally cannot fathom a sentence (even spoken) that begins $a\in A$. Can you share this with us? Also, anything I think of that starts with "$X$" I can only think of as having the form "$X$ is a scheme, so ..." which is easily converted to "Since $X$ is a scheme, we have ..." I personally think the latter sounds more natural anyway. The former is very abrupt, and doesn't give the reader a chance to realize that you are going to use that property rather than just stating that property as a fact. | |
| May 16, 2010 at 4:32 | answer | added | Noah Snyder | timeline score: 1 | |
| May 15, 2010 at 23:26 | comment | added | Peter Luthy | Greg, do you have any particular examples worth sharing, or are you simply finding your prose has become a monotonous glob of ideas punctuated by thus and therefore? | |
| May 15, 2010 at 23:23 | answer | added | Peter Luthy | timeline score: 2 | |
| May 15, 2010 at 23:04 | comment | added | Blue | I'd also recommend Knuth's "Mathematical Writing" (ISBN 088385063X). Page 1, point 2: "Don't start a sentence with a symbol." | |
| May 15, 2010 at 23:03 | comment | added | Alison Miller | @Harald Hance-Olsen: yes, that is the lecture. | |
| May 15, 2010 at 23:00 | answer | added | Chris Godsil | timeline score: 16 | |
| May 15, 2010 at 22:55 | comment | added | Harald Hanche-Olsen | There is a link to modular.fas.harvard.edu/edu/basic/serre from Serre's wikipedia page. The linked page has a link to a file serre.avi that just might be the lecture in question. (It's 459 megabytes – I am downloading it now … 23 minutes download time remaining.) | |
| May 15, 2010 at 22:54 | answer | added | gowers | timeline score: 11 | |
| May 15, 2010 at 22:49 | answer | added | Douglas S. Stones | timeline score: 7 | |
| May 15, 2010 at 22:43 | comment | added | dakota | Harry, the lecture you mention seems interesting. Do you have a link or reference where one could find the video or a transcript? | |
| May 15, 2010 at 22:22 | comment | added | Simon Thomas | Starting a sentence with a mathematical symbol is very bad style ... it's much better to begin with one of the usual fillers: "Thus", "Then", "The function $f$", etc. | |
| May 15, 2010 at 21:40 | answer | added | Robby McKilliam | timeline score: 4 | |
| May 15, 2010 at 21:27 | comment | added | Gerald Edgar | "Now" is useful. | |
| May 15, 2010 at 21:27 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | I do hope you've seen Serre's lecture on mathematical writing. Remember, write "The map f", or "The function f" instead of just "f". "The manifold M", "The space X", "The scheme S", "The element e", etc. | |
| May 15, 2010 at 21:24 | answer | added | Tara Holm | timeline score: 23 | |
| May 15, 2010 at 21:12 | history | asked | Greg Muller | CC BY-SA 2.5 |