Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Mathematics

Shouldn't the article state that Wikipedia uses the modern nomenclature where fields are assumed to be commutative and uses "division ring" for the more general case, and give guidance on whther to avoid "skew field" and "sfield"? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 20:51, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

There is a section Division rings in Field. Nevertheless, I added "skew field" in the hatnote. D.Lazard (talk) 21:29, 27 May 2025 (UTC)

Yes, but I was addressing the guidelines in MOS. Wouldn't it be appropriate to link to Field (mathematics) and Division ring as giving the nomenclature to be used? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 12:40, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

As far as I understand, section § Terminology conventions is intended for making Wikipeida homogeneous in the cases where different conventions are common outside Wikipedia, and disputes occur frequently between editors who disagree on the convention to be used. Presently, it is no more common to use "field" instead of "division algebra", and disagreements about the convention to use are unlikely. The only problem is to avoid confusion for the (rare, I suppose) readers who are accustomed to the older terminology. This is not a subject for the manual of style, and the edits done on Field (mathematics) solve the problem completely, in my opinion, D.Lazard (talk) 14:00, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

I see, as a mathematical notational convention, The bar notation is discouraged because it is not supported by all browsers followed by a suggestion to use the deprecated Template:Unicode which seems to exist to fix (long-EOLed) Windows XP. Is this still an active concern? Sesquilinear (talk) 17:40, 3 July 2025 (UTC)

Based on mw:Compatibility#Browsers the only browser from before the depreciation that isn't in the "you're on your own, buddy" category is the Android WebView which I'm pretty sure did not have any Unicode issues like that. So I don't think it makes sense to have this in the MoS. Sesquilinear (talk) 18:51, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

Also the part about using numeric unicode escapes rather than the character itself makes no sense now. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:03, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

There should be guidelines in § Algebra on the use of the terms

1. Abelian
2. anticommutative
3. antisymmetric
4. commutative
5. Non-abelian
6. Noncommutative
7. skew-symmetric
8. symmetric

This should include guidelines on whether to change the style of existing articles. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:55, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

this says that if and only if should be avoided and i disagree wholeheartedly. if and only if means something very specific, and other terms might mislead the reader on what is actually happening. i think if and only if should always be used when applicable, and the first use should link to the article Safetypinzz (talk) 18:57, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

The manual does not tell us to avoid "if and only if". There are two relevant passages, that you might be mis-interpreting.

First, the manual tells us to avoid "if and only if" when giving a definition. That can be argued over, but currently one side has won the argument.

Second, the manual tells us to avoid "iff" as an abbreviation for "if and only if". I've never heard anyone seriously argue otherwise, as far as encyclopedia text is concerned.

Does this explanation help you? Do you still have an objection? Mgnbar (talk) 19:57, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

The phrasing "if and only if" should definitely not be avoided. But I think on most articles, it should not be linked. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:57, 13 December 2025 (UTC)

What is best way to display cubic units of measurement, e.g.

• m³/sec (using Template:super) vs.
• m³/sec (unicode)

in, say, a geography article? Noleander (talk) 00:57, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts covers this: use ³ or {{sup|3}}. Indefatigable (talk) 02:51, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

OK thanks. Noleander (talk) 03:28, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

What level of parsing is applied with the <math alt="..."> text? For example, can I write

<math alt="{{math|''&phi;''{{sup|2}}}}">\phi^2</math>

to have the alt text be the HTML that I would have used instead of the LaTeX?

I guess my question really is: regardless of the answer to the above question, would you add something to the project page that explains what is permitted in the alt tag. Thank you —Quantling (talk | contribs) 20:41, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

My understanding is that alt text is intended to be read out loud, not displayed visually. Or maybe it might even be converted to Braille. So trying to do things that clutter the sequence of characters to be read in an attempt to change the (nonexistent) visual formatting is a mistake. In this example, alt="phi squared" might be a better choice. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:59, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick response. If I had used only HTML {{math|''φ''{{sup|2}}}} and no LaTeX whatsoever <math>\phi^2</math> how would the read-out-loud / Braille handle it? If that handling is at all reasonable, I'm hoping to get both the LaTeX visual and the read-out-loud / Braille handling with <math alt="{{math|''&phi;''{{sup|2}}}}">\phi^2</math>. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 21:30, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

You would have to ask someone with a screenreader or try it yourself. I would expect the answer to be something like "math ampersand phi sup 2", but I am suspicious that alt text in the math tag actually goes nowhere at all. At least, when I inspect the accessibility properties of the resulting DOM object in the Firefox accessibility inspector, I can't find any alt text.

Why do you want to put any formatting at all into alt text? What do you think that would accomplish? According to Help:Alt text, "The alt attribute can only contain plain text (no HTML or wiki markup such as wikilinks) without line breaks." —David Eppstein (talk) 21:51, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Yes, that's it — I want a link to Help:Alt text in this project page so that others will know what is possible in the alt tag, and perhaps we'd add the actual sentence you found too. If this were an ordinary article, I'd boldly make that edit. Should I instead wait to see whether there are no objections?

Yes, if it were the case that the read-out-loud / Braile functionality was able to do something reasonable with {{math|''φ''{{sup|2}}}} within article text then I'd want it to do the same reasonable thing when that string is supplied as the alt tag of <math>. But it sounds like my supposition isn't true ... which would make this moot. —Quantling (talk | contribs) 21:26, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

I added a line and a link to Help:Alt text. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:38, 7 May 2026 (UTC)