One of my mathematics teachers, a long time ago, once objected to statements of the type<\/p>\n
\nLet X<\/i> and Y<\/i> be two compact topological spaces. Then X x Y<\/i> is also compact\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
on the ground that the use of two<\/i> implied that the statement did not<\/i> apply to the case of X x X<\/i>, whose compacity would need to be stated separately, as it was not, strictly speaking, an application of the given statement. <\/p>\n
His favored solution was to drop the two<\/i> (or, in French, to replace Soient X et Y deux<\/b> espaces…<\/i> by Soient X et Y des<\/b> espaces<\/i>….), with the idea (I presume) that making a grammatical mistake (using a plural form like des<\/b><\/i> when, sometimes, there is only one object, if X=Y<\/i>) would be less important than a mathematical one.<\/p>\n
Strangely enough, I still sometimes remember this, and I have modified various sentences to try to go around it, although the whole thing seems quite absurd really… I wonder if others have heard this type of rules, and if there’s a mathematically and syntaxically correct way to phrase things without being absurdly formal? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my mathematics teachers, a long time ago, once objected to statements of the type Let X and Y be two compact topological spaces. Then X x Y is also compact on the ground that the use of two implied that the statement did not apply to the case of X x X, whose … Continue reading Pedantic style<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":625,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[362,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-blogroll"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}