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.
| Abbreviation | Definition |
| ETS / ETP / STP | enough to show / enough to prove / sufficient to prove |
| FSOC / FSOCWMA | for sake of contradiction / for sake of contradiction, we may assume |
| NTS / WTP / WTS | need to show / want to prove / want to show |
| TFAE | the following are equivalent |
| W^5 | which was what we want |
| WLOG / WALOG / WLOGWMA | without loss of generality / without any loss of generality / without loss of generality, we may assume |
| WRT | with respect to |
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