Mathematical Abbreviations

Here is a short list of mathematical abbreviations which troubled me the first time I graded students’ papers. You should be familiar with these words if you have used English as your first language in mathematics for years. But for students who has no experience of writing maths in English, this list might help.

AbbreviationDefinition
ETS / ETP / STPenough to show / enough to prove / sufficient to prove
FSOC / FSOCWMAfor sake of contradiction / for sake of contradiction, we may assume
NTS / WTP / WTSneed to show / want to prove / want to show
TFAEthe following are equivalent
W^5which was what we want
WLOG / WALOG / WLOGWMAwithout loss of generality / without any loss of generality / without loss of generality, we may assume
WRTwith respect to

1 comment

  1. even for english speakers, it is easy to come across abbreviations which previous instructors are using which you have never personally seen before. here are a couple to add to your list !! lol
    WWTS = we want to show
    WTF = want to find

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