Re: mathematical formulae-punctuation
Usually, I assume that sentences containing mathematical formulae use normal punctuation but the format of the present book I am working on has all formulae inserted as images with a paragraph break before and after each one.... Should I be treating these differently?
Hold it a second. Why are you assuming there's only one "correct" way to do equations? This is a style issue, and style is a matter of convention. Instead of worrying about making your style *correct*, you should worry about making your style *consistent*.
Your subject line is a case in point. You say "formulae", but every organization I've ever worked for would say "formulas". Style rules that require you to know how to inflect dead languages are a lot of extra work, so it's easier to say "Use plain English plurals, unless the Latin plural is so well established that not using it would cause confusion (agenda, not agendums)." Which rule is "correct"? I don't know, and I don't care. As a tech writer, it's not your job to be correct, it your job to be clear. Clarity means consistency.
The way you achieve consistency is to pick a pick a style manual (or maybe you sit down and write one), and you make sure everybody involved knows that this manual is the final arbiter of how to spell and inflect and lay out equations.
Though you'll probably want to have a few exceptions. As when you get tired of your readers telling you, "it's styli, not styluses!", so you decide to say "styli" even though "styluses" is perfectly clear. So you put that in a private addendum to whatever style manual you use -- unless it's your own, in which case you just add the rule. Either way, you have to make it clear to everybody involved whether it's "styluses" or "styli".
And incidentally, The Chicago Manual of Style has a good section on equations.
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