Nauseating Notation Very Much in Draft

1 the abuses of language without which any mathematical text threatens to become pedantic and even unreadable. [3] but some abuse is more harmful than others. 1 Intervals We raise this old chestnut first because it illustrates some of the problems. How do we represent {x : 0 < x ≤ 1}? Semantically, there is no problem. <OMS name="interval_oc" cd="interval1''/> 0 1 <\OMA> Presentationally, there are two well-kown routes: the " anglo-saxon " way (0, 1] and the " french " way ]0, 1]. The purpose of this paper is not to argue that one is " better " than the other: merely that there are two competing ones, and the use of the unfamiliar one may well baffle. This is familiar to us all from the solution to the quadratic: −b ± √ b 2 − 4ac 2a , (1) 1 On 10.6.2007, a quick Google demonstrated 783 uses of " abus de notation " , roughly 10% of which were in english-language papers.