# How to write an "x" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 22, 2024, 8:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009 "2024-12-22T08:14:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2024, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/21 "2024-12-22T21:21:00Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > My personal way to write x is the one described by @Moonrise: upper left to lower right, then lower left to upper right. I like to go upper left to lower right, then upper right to lower left. My point, though, is that I just write an “x” as I normally would, without attempting to make it more italic. (I write using sloped, joined-up letters anyway.) I wonder if some students are consciously trying to imitate printed text, in which there is definitely a clear italic vs roman distinction? Not to mention Kurrentschrift. Which brings to mind the reverse phenomenon, origin of many standard mathematical symbols, from an integral-sign “s” to Blackboard Bold… ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2024, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/22 "2024-12-22T22:15:18Z")
I was taught to write the lower-case letter x that way (like two back-to-back curves). I actually don’t know how I write it now - I would have to try writing it to find out, and even then I wouldn’t fully trust the result as it could be very context-dependent. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2024, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/23 "2024-12-22T22:23:16Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > That is what I think, namely that the different forms are a function of what model students are being taught to use for their handwriting: round hand, Spencerian, Palmer, etc. There is a lot of regional variation. I mean, I was explicitly taught in secondary school _‘we write x in algebra this way, formed from two curved lines’_ - it was a maths/physics convention that was distinct from the teaching of handwriting in general (which we had learned earlier in primary school). I remember an unrelated, but somewhat similar moment learning handwriting in primary school where we were encouraged to start writing the number 8 using a single stroke instead of writing it as one circle stacked on another. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2024, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/24 "2024-12-22T23:43:05Z")
A cross also denotes multiplication in scientific notation (eg. 6.02 × 1023), although it’s unlikely to be confused with a letter x in that context. I guess in handwriting I distinguish a letter “x” from a multiplication cross by writing the cross smaller and raised above the baseline compared to the letter, but I can see that a clearer way to distinguish them might be useful. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/25 "2024-12-23T00:05:10Z")
Another Australian. I remember making a number of specific changes to how I wrote things when in undergraduate mathematics. I don’t remember if x was one of them, or whether that was already ingrained, but ensuring things were clearly distinguished mattered. I started to cross my sevens and Zs. Plus took care over Greek letters. A cross product \times needs to be clearly different to an x. My handwriting has always been awful, so I needed everything to help legibility. Aleph I never got right. Just a big N with some squiggles. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/26 "2024-12-23T00:11:25Z")
> [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > A cross product \times×\times needs to be clearly different to an xxx. I cannot really think of a case where this might be an issue, since one denotes a letter and the other a binary operation. > [@Francis\_Vaughan](#): > > Plus took care over Greek letters. \xi versus \zeta, on the other hand… ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/27 "2024-12-23T00:27:33Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > since one denotes a letter and the other a binary operation. Depends. I found it helped parsing expressions. Visually clarity in the symbols used made a difference. Lower case letters generally have a default type system associated with them. Depends on context, but ambiguity in a symbol, even if there is only one sensible meaning still made one’s head hurt. > [@DPRK](#): > > \xi versus \zeta, on the other hand… Quite. Groan. ---
**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:** [December 23, 2024, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/28 "2024-12-23T00:50:47Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > I cannot really think of a case where this might be an issue, since one denotes a letter and the other a binary operation. Is wxy the product of w and y, or is it the product of w, x, and y? When I’m writing on the board, I also make sure that my 't’s have a hooked tail, and my lowercase 'l’s are cursive. I also got into the habit of always putting a tail on ‘u’, to distinguish it from the union symbol, though that one’s not as relevant at the high school level. Now if only there were a good trick for distinguishing the capital and lowercase letters that look the same. That can be an issue with, for instance, the Law of Sines: “Solve for C in this triangle”. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/29 "2024-12-23T01:07:40Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Is wxy the product of w and y, or is it the product of w, x, and y? What are _w_, _x_, and _y_? wxy making sense in context indicates they are some kind of vectors and you consider their cross product? In which case you would probably denote the tensor product as w\otimes x \otimes y instead of just wxy. On the other hand, if they are elements of, say, a multiplicative group, you would write wy or w\cdot y, never w\times y. Or whatever, mutatis mutandis. I have seen people write things like \vec w \times \vec y where the arrow in this case emphasizes the quantities are vectors. > [@Chronos](#): > > Now if only there were a good trick for distinguishing the capital and lowercase letters that look the same. They don’t look at all the same when I write them, because the C I would write as a monumental capital while the c as a medial “script” letter with the relevant initial stroke (mirroring somewhat the printed “italic” style, at least morally) ---
**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:** [December 23, 2024, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/30 "2024-12-23T01:11:12Z")
Sure, there are other aspects of context that can help, but just the fact that × is a binary operator isn’t enough. ---
**Author:** ![Strenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecae2f/32.png) [@Strenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strenger)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/31 "2024-12-23T03:48:03Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Unicode has a code for “Mathematical Italic Small X”, so it’s pretty clearly established. OK…that’s about how I’ve always written a lower-case “x.” No, not a mathematician, nor a logician, nor any of their subsidiary practical fields, although I’ve done my share of undergraduate coursework in the arts and sciences related to those diverse disciplines. Don’t know how or when I started writing it like that, but it seemed to make sense. Always cross the “7,” the “z,” “foot” and little thing on the numeral “1.” Never was taught the fancy cursive as a child…rather, I think it was the Palmer method we used (not sure…that simple new-age one that all the kids were crazy about back in the day)…and have never, ever used any type of cursive in handwriting. A legible scrawl with admirably regular strokes. Standard American public elementary school education, and all that. Used to know some ancient Greek, maybe…not sure what role that played: likely none. just straight lines intersecting? Probably as a child didn’t care for the way it looked…kind of stark…and then as an older student, you know, cross-product and such enters into it, so I saw no reason to introduce more confusion into my notations. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/32 "2024-12-23T08:42:09Z")
To add another element to the story, a capital “X” (written like the letter) is also how people in Germany, including myself, typically mark their ballot paper in elections, or tick boxes in forms. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/33 "2024-12-23T09:45:06Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > What always strikes me as odd is that modern calculators all still have a button labeled ÷ , but if you press it what appears on the screen is a / . The calculator program that came with my operating system does it the opposite way. I type in a slash / and it displays an obelus ÷. OK, the button on the calculator image has an obelus, but I never use that; always use the keyboard. As far as multiplication symbol, I’m a good programmer and use an asterisk \*. The calculator has the × symbol, but I always type an \* and of course it displays an ×. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/34 "2024-12-23T13:11:40Z")
> [@Mighty\_Mouse](#): > > By the way, my students have found that writing exam answers in cursive is problematic. The graders cannot reliably read cursive. So the ones who learned cursive (typically who attended Catholic elementary school) have to learn to print the answers. Regarding the discussion aout writing Greek letters - I remember a comment once that it is almost impossible to decipher Cyrillic in cursive. > [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > That’s why the European ~~7~~ makes so much sense; it’s not possible to confuse it with a 1. I’ve also trained myself to wite the 7 with a cross, and also the letter Z when printed to distinguish it from 2. As I understand, crossing the 7 is important in Europe because the tendency there is to make the 1 where the top diagonal upstroke is far more pronounced, so it is easier to mistake for a 7. Similarly, unless you make a very obvious top corner, 2 and Z are easy to confuse. > [@Schnitte](#): > > To add another element to the story, a capital “X” (written like the letter) is also how people in Germany, including myself, typically mark their ballot paper in elections, or tick boxes in forms. Same here. It’s generally the way shown to mark a ballot, although technically any mark that shows which choice you selected is acceptable. When counting ballots, I hold them up and the scrutineer for each party can look and either agree or dispute. Some people use a check mark (rarely) like a “V” with a long tail to the right. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/35 "2024-12-23T13:36:27Z")
But that doesn’t look the the “x” described in the OP, which is two c’s back to back, more or less. Anyhow, American here. We were not taught to differentiate our algebraic x. We just wrote it how we would normally write our x. I cant remember ever using “x” to indicate multiplication in my algebra or calculus classes. We used a dot. Maybe in scientific notation, but that notation was almost only seen in science classes. ---
**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:** [December 23, 2024, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/36 "2024-12-23T14:23:44Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > Regarding the discussion aout writing Greek letters - I remember a comment once that it is almost impossible to decipher Cyrillic in cursive. I was grading a college course once where one of the students used Cyrillic letters for the auxiliary variables he introduced. OK, fine, auxiliary variables often make an answer more concise, and by using Cyrillic, he avoided ever using the same letters that were already in the problem… except that I didn’t realize that [Ш](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sha_(Cyrillic)) and [Щ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shcha) were different letters. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/37 "2024-12-23T20:08:20Z")
I am not even consistent. Maybe half the time I use the method described in the OP, but the other half, I will make an elongated s from upper left to lower right, followed by a simple crossing line from upper right to lower left. What I never do is just two straight lines crossing. The \times is used for several other things, the most important being cartesian product. When I make them the \xi and \zeta look entirely different. I once heard a lecture by the Russian mathematician Matyesevich (not sure how to spell it) who wrote a formula involving 26 variables. He explained that the formula originally involved 32 variables but he had worked hard to get it down to 26 so he could write it using only lower case roman letters. I don’t know about Cyrillic. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2024, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/38 "2024-12-23T23:06:17Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > When I make them the \xiξ\xi and \zetaζ\zeta look entirely different. I am sure you do. However, some people: [![](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/24/08/9d/24089d4e39ce8781e95bbad4d5c6b5e6.jpg) ](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/24/08/9d/24089d4e39ce8781e95bbad4d5c6b5e6.jpg) [![](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/dd/fd/3f/ddfd3fb02cc6f7a8cd619f125605aec8--greek-alphabet-letters-greek-lettering.jpg) ](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/dd/fd/3f/ddfd3fb02cc6f7a8cd619f125605aec8--greek-alphabet-letters-greek-lettering.jpg) You can see _many_ potential avenues of confusion, even more so if you consider Greek vs. Latin, combined with slightly messy handwriting… > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I once heard a lecture by the Russian mathematician Matyesevich (not sure how to spell it) who wrote a formula involving 26 variables. Sometimes people put in a little extra effort to get such formulae: [![](https://thatsmaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jones-prime-generator.jpg) ](https://thatsmaths.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jones-prime-generator.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2024, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009/39 "2024-12-24T22:02:46Z")
Yeah, I think that was it. He was putting the finishing touches on the final solution to Hilbert’s fifth problem. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-to-write-an-x/1012009.md?page=1)