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Proper (?) writing style says the first time you introduce an acronym, such as the dreaded Three Letter Acronym (TLA), you write out the acronym the first time
by jkmcf 12y ago
Proper (?) writing style says the first time you introduce an acronym, such as the dreaded Three Letter Acronym (TLA), you write out the acronym the first time you use it and put the abbreviation in parentheses.
It makes sense to do this for notation in all fields where the reader might become confused. I'm not sure a standard is needed, maybe only a movement of reviewers rejecting papers containing the vagaries.
- Normati 12y agoA table of symbols is extremely helpful. I hate reading a paper where the author defines things when they first appear. If you missed that bit, you have to spend minutes searching for it, and forget what you were thinking about. It's worse in a text book where you have to search many chapters to find where it was introduced. Complete waste of time. I don't think there can be "palletes" to choose from, because interdisciplinary work will find there's no pallete that fits.
- 1971genocide 12y agoI am glad someone else feels the same way. I always make sure to have a huge table of symbol just after the index page. If I am writing a 100+ page thesis I want to make sure I can "call" one of the symbols to express my idea. The trick is to give nice easy to remember names to your variables and leave as many common variable letters like a,b,c,d,x,y,z to be used as local variables if needed.