Purplemath: Formatting Math as Text: Common Algebraic Notation

Math can look so pretty, all nicely formatted in the textbook. But when you go to e-mail your instructor with a question, or post your question to a math tutoring forum, you can end up with a mess or with something that totally doesn't mean what you meant to say. To deal with this issue, the math community has developed norms for text-only formatting. The authors demonstrates formatting for common algebraic expressions, and explains how to avoid common formatting errors and confusion.