Reply To: Spacing of Function Names
Thank you for your fast response. Unfortunately I am even more confused than before, because you say to follow print when a blank space is clearly (and consistently) shown in the text, but you later say to remove the blank space for numbers. Nowhere in the rules does it explicitly say to remove spaces for numbers or any of the other symbols. In all of the rules they use the terms:
directly preceded or followed by a number
followed directly by a lower case Latin letter
preceded directly by a lower case or upper case Latin letter
To me this means that there are no blank spaces in the print and this is what you need to do to eliminate any ambiguity that can occur when material is unspaced. To infer that they mean to remove blank spaces when it is not stated, and none of the examples for numbers are spaced, is very confusing to me because it then opens up another series of questions:
Do we unspace clearly spaced fractions because they contain numbers?
Do we unspace numbers inside of signs of enclosures when they are clearly spaced?
Do we unspace numbers inside of clearly spaced radical signs?
Examples of these questions are shown in the examples at the beginning of my first inquiry. Wouldn't it make sense that they would have explicit rules telling us what to do for all of these situations when a blank space is shown in print if they needed to tell us what to do for numbers?
Finally, is there some way to communicate directly with the BANA Math Committee (or is that what you do for us) to find out what they meant by these rules and whether or not they are going to amend them to resolve this ambiguity as well as include clearer examples of what to do with both spaced and unspaced examples?
Thanks again for your time and assistance with this matter.