Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Mathematics

Markup for Common sets of numbers?

The guidelines for § Common sets of numbers mention using \textbfin LaTeX. What about the LaTeX) commands

• \C ($\mathbb {C}$)
• \H ($\mathbb {H}$)
• \N ($\mathbb {N}$)
• \Q ($\mathbb {Q}$)
• \R ($\mathbb {R}$)
• \Z ($\mathbb {Z}$)

all of which render in blackboard? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:02, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

These commands are completely fine to use (and indeed should be preferred, to keep source markup concise). If they ever become broken for whatever reason they could easily be fixed by a script. –jacobolus (t) 19:49, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

fixing {{Percent}}

Hoping someone with template editor rights and more knowledge of Lua can fix {{Percent}}, which is outputting hyphen-minus (---) and not minus-minus (−), e.g.: {{percent|-1}} → -1%

That should be producing: −1% —Joeyconnick (talk) 23:28, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Integral not bracketing the integrand

Does:

$\alpha (x,t)=e^{i\left(k_{0}x-\omega _{0}t\right)}\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }dk\,A(k)e^{i(k-k_{0})\left(x-\omega '_{0}t\right)}.$

warrant reformatting on the grounds of being confusing to those unfamiliar with the practice, or does MOS:STYLERET apply?

Thanks, catslash (talk) 23:51, 7 August 2024 (UTC)

By the time you're seeing FTs, you should have started getting used to seeing several style conventions. At the very least, there is no alternative interpretation suggested by your title -- no bracketing -- that would make sense, since every factor depends on the variable of integration k. In other example integrands, where factors may not depend on k, whether or not those factors are included inside or outside the integrand does not matter. Anyone with competence in basic calculus will deduce that the integrals work either way, regardless of whether they get thrown off for a moment by unfamiliar conventions. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:43, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

And yes there legibility and pedagogical reasons for putting the differential in one place or another, so MoS:StyleRet naturally applies. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:47, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

This kind of thing is common in some disciplines, and is fine, but should perhaps be changed if it shows up in an article about introductory calculus. –jacobolus (t) 19:47, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Sign conventions and signatures

Are there any wiki guidelines on sign conventions and signatures, e.g., is a Lorentzian metric (+,-,-,-), (-,-,-,+), (-,+,+,+) or (+,+,+,-)? There are are multiple topics where the literature does not have a consistent choice of sign conventions. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 14:30, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

The literature is so wildly inconsistent about metric signatures that the best we can do, I think, is to make each article internally consistent within itself. XOR'easter (talk) 18:48, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I would call any of those a "Lorentzian metric". The wikilink you pointed to seems to mention that, so that seems fine (though it might be better to send that redirect to a new subsection of Pseudo-Euclidean space instead of a subsection of Pseudo-Riemannian manifold). I agree with XOR'easter that articles should try for internal consistency (and optionally, unobtrusively mention alternatives). –jacobolus (t) 19:25, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Any are acceptable, but in my opinion the default should be +++- or -+++ since then spacelike surfaces are Riemannian and not (for lack of a better name) negative-Riemannian. With ---+ or +--- there are no Riemannian submanifolds except the very trivial (timelike) one-dimensional ones. Gumshoe2 (talk) 20:08, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Function notation and screen readers

Hello all, Per MOS:FNOF in this MOS article, we should use italic f rather than the U+0192 ƒ character for functions because screen readers don't support the latter, as of 2010. However, that was 14 years ago. Is there any new info on what characters are supported? Is this guidance irrelevant because of some other happenings in the WikiMath realm? I am not a mathematical editor and wouldn't know.

Thanks!

JuxtaposedJacob (talk) 08:04, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I would recommend against using the ƒ character for mathematics. Some people use it for f-stops, but f is probably a generally better choice for that too. –jacobolus (t) 19:29, 3 October 2024 (UTC)