Mathematical Communication is a developing collection of resources for engaging students in writing and speaking about mathematics, whether for the purpose of learning mathematics or of learning to communicate as mathematicians.

Resources for writing math

[The following notes are from Steven Kleiman’s 2010 Undergraduate Seminar in Computational Commutative Algebra and Algebraic Geometry at MIT. Many of the files below can be downloaded in one zip folder.]

Here are some files to help you write mathematics in a way that is more professional in style and format.

The following files are the two source files and two compiled versions of the guide, “Writing a Math Phase Two Paper:”

This guide gives a lot of tips on writing a short math paper, and also serves as a model of one. The introduction describes MIT’s old Phase Two Writing Requirement; its content is, in part, no longer relevant, but it serves as a reminder to write an introduction that includes background material and that discusses the contents. The following file contains a number of URLs, with lots of info about obtaining and using TeX software:

In particular, the guide

is a fairly good summary of the commands of AMS-LaTeX. The file resources.txt is in pure ASCII text, not HTML.  So the URLs must be copied into your web browser. The following two files are the TeX source and the compiled version of the solution to Exercise 10 on Page 12.

Please use them as a model for your own solution sets. Start with SmplEx.tex, and make all the appropriate changes. Most publishers of math supply TeX style files, and the next two files are the TeX style files for the department’s Undergraduate Journal of Math. They should be used for your term paper.

The following two files make it easier to get started with TeXing your term paper. The former has all the necessary structural declarations; the second also has some examples, illustrating some common formating code.

License: CC BY-NC-SA Page content licensed by Steven L Kleiman under the license:
CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike)

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