# Greek Characters and Math **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 24, 2004, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greek-characters-and-math/261265 "2004-08-24T14:14:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greek-characters-and-math/261265/1 "2004-08-24T14:14:30Z")
- - - While transcribing part of a technical book to electronic form I got to wondering: what symbols do Greek people use in maths to represent symbols of particular notariety? Asuming that they use their regular alphabet letters for normal variables, that is…? ~ ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greek-characters-and-math/261265/2 "2004-08-24T14:48:18Z")
Do modern-day Greeks still use the Greek alphabet? Whether they do or not, my WAG is that Greeks, Russians, Chinese, and anyone else whose language is not normally written in the Roman alphabet still follow the same conventions as the rest of us in where they use Roman, Greek, etc. letters when writing math. But like I said, this is just a guess; can we hear from someone who knows for sure? ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greek-characters-and-math/261265/3 "2004-08-24T15:10:05Z")
> [@Thudlow Boink](#): > > Do modern-day Greeks still use the Greek alphabet? Er, yes! Have you not seen any of the Olympics? All those **ΑΘΗΝΑ 2004** hoardings ought to give you a clue. ---
**Author:** ![MikeS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MikeS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MikeS)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greek-characters-and-math/261265/4 "2004-08-24T17:16:10Z")
I asked a fellow grad student in physics who hails from Greece. His reply was that most of the symbols are Roman, and certainly the well-known ones (such as _g_, _c_, etc.) Every now and then, he said, you’ll see a Greek letter substituted in; he recalled, in particular, the equation F = m[symbol]g[/symbol] instead of F = ma from his high school physics class. (The [symbol]g[/symbol] there should be a Greek letter gamma; it’s not showing up on my screen, but I think that’s because I don’t have the proper fonts installed on this computer.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2004, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greek-characters-and-math/261265/5 "2004-08-24T18:33:17Z")
> [@](#): > > (The [symbol]g[/symbol] there should be a Greek letter gamma; it’s not showing up on my screen, but I think that’s because I don’t have the proper fonts installed on this computer.) You almost certainly have the Symbol font installed, but Mozilla (if that’s what you’re using) does not recognize the Symbol font in a font tag, since it’s not explicitly specified in the HTML standards. And I know that I’ve seen papers written in Russian which used Cyrillic letters in some formulae, but I can’t remember specifics. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greek-characters-and-math/261265/6 "2004-08-30T15:56:55Z")
- - - **The saga continues:** the material I am attempting to copy uses regular periods to end textual sentences, and also uses periods, mid-dots (a period spaced halfway up the baseline) and round bullets (large dots spaced halfway up the baseline) to signify multiplication & dot product as well. In some instances there is a pattern to the use (using only bullets in superscripts and subscripts, because a period that small probably would not have printed well) but other times, they seem to toss around these three symbols interchangeably. Does a midway-up dot ever mean anything besides multiplication or dot product? And since the vector variables are always bolded anyway, can I assume that the reader will know where dot product is appropriate? * * * - The usage of “periods” to signify sentence endings (containing mathematical expressions) as well as math operations is not sitting well with me. What I would like to do is use _only_ a round bullet to signify a mathematical operation, and then use _only_ regular periods to end textual sentences–because these two symbols can be easily identified apart from each other–but I don’t want the result to confuse any math operators. ~ ---
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2004, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greek-characters-and-math/261265/7 "2004-08-30T17:11:54Z")
What you describe (period for sentence ending and centered dot (\cdot in LaTeX) for multiplication, etc.) is what is most common these days in American English documents. I’ve seen authors use periods for multiplication, but it has always been in situations with limited publishing capabilities. (Older theses, for example.) Also, - Some parts of the world use a centered dot for the decimal point, but other than that, dot product and multiplication are pretty much it. (Although I’m guessing a mathematician will show up shortly with some random operation that sometimes gets a \cdot.) - Yes, if vector variables are **bolded** , then the reader should know to interpret the \cdot as “dot product”. And, if they are expected to know how to handle a dot product, then you will likely want to use nothing at all to indicate multiplication (_e.g._, _ab_=_a_ times _b_), and then the \cdot is no longer overloaded. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 8:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greek-characters-and-math/261265/8 "2004-10-13T08:47:00Z")
- - - Still going: does it necessarily mean anything if a Greek/Roman symbol is _italicised_ or not? The reason I ask is that the source material has them slightly italicised, while if I italicise them in Word they “lean” too much–the delta symbol looks like a right triangle. Some are more easily recognizable if they are unitalicised. And I know that there’s a way to go in and Word will let you set the degrees of lean in the lettering style, but I feel that doing so would take too long to do, especially if it’s not truly necessary… ~ ---
**Author:** ![Dog80](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@Dog80](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dog80)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2004, 9:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/greek-characters-and-math/261265/9 "2004-10-13T09:25:54Z")
Greek numerals should not be italicized and are always lowercase letters. (Ancient Greeks wrote in capital letters only. Lowercase was reserved for numerals) Look here: [http://132.236.125.30/numcode.html](http://132.236.125.30/numcode.html) For number 90, you can use lowercase “q” instead. The letter “ς” (number 6) can be typed by pressing “w”. The form “F” (called ‘digamma’) for number six is really really ancient and maybe you shouldn’t use it. The accent at the end of the number is important I guess, but I don’t know how exactly they are used. I don’t know about Roman numerals though. Hope I helped. 🙂