calculusexpert
New member
- Joined
- Dec 1, 2025
- Messages
- 8
I completely take your point! Looking back, I can see how those square brackets were a bit of a 'crutch' while I was navigating the syntax.Come on...
That's a rather feeble excuse!
For a start, the square brackets were your idea (to make your expression (a bit) clearer without using LaTex?)
"d/dx[x ^ f(x)]" is (a little bit) less ambiguous than "d/dxx ^ f(x)" but, using LaTex. in [imath]\frac{d}{dx}[x^{f(x)}][/imath] the square brackets are pretty much redundant as it can be just as clearly written as: [imath]\frac{d}{dx}x^{f(x)}[/imath] and, dispensing with the square brackets, there are only single level brackets in the code (\frac{d}{dx}x^{f(x)}) where the brackets are only there to take the functions' arguments; two pairs of curlies for the nominator & denominator of the fraction and a third pair for the (compound) exponent.
I'm afraid it always strikes me as a little bit lazy when folks resort to inserting Mathematical expressions in plain text when they could be made so much clearer (and attractive) if properly configured using the LaTex code.
If anyone is just a little bit unsure as to what the correct syntax is then this site allows you to pick & choose the items you wish to display with ease and once you have the desired result you can simply copy & paste the code into your post(s). The site will even allow you to grab a .png image of your result that can then be attached to your post as a (resizable) picture; for example:-
The only problem with that system is that the site uses 'centred' alignment (Like [math/math]) so (when I wrote that code) I inserted it directly into my post (using [tex/tex]) to produce:-
\(\displaystyle \qquad\>\,19=1+3n(n-1)\\\implies 18=3n(n-1)\\\implies\frac{18}{3}=n(n-1)\\\implies6=n(n-1)\\\implies6=n^2-n\\\implies n^2-n-6=0\\\implies(n+2)(n-3)=0\\\implies n=3\text{ or }n=-2\)
Which I felt looked much better. (Using [imath/imath] would have done the same job as [tex/tex], of course, but using [math/math] would have produced the same 'outcome' as the picture downloaded from the site, ie:-
[math]\qquad\>\,19=1+3n(n-1)\\\implies 18=3n(n-1)\\\implies\frac{18}{3}=n(n-1)\\\implies6=n(n-1)\\\implies6=n^2-n\\\implies n^2-n-6=0\\\implies(n+2)(n-3)=0\\\implies n=3\text{ or }n=-2[/math]
Hope that helps.
To be honest, when I first joined this forum, I was completely unfamiliar with LaTeX. I’ve learned almost everything I know about mathematical formatting right here from the feedback and examples provided by members like yourself. I truly appreciate the nudge toward better clarity; it makes the math much more readable and, as you said, more attractive.
In fact, I took that lesson to heart. Because I realized how steep the learning curve can be for newcomers, I’ve actually integrated a dedicated LaTeX editor into my own site recently. My goal was to provide a free, user-friendly tool for my visitors to practice and generate perfect code—much like the external editors you mentioned—so they don't have to struggle with 'feeble' plain text as I did!
I’m still refining my skills, but I’m committed to keeping things clean and 'configured' from here on out. Thanks for the resource link and for keeping the standards high around here.