Do you typeset your own math or does some junior editor at the publisher do
it?
When writing up a lab in LaTeX a while ago I looked in Serway to see how to
typeset vectors and then I wrote the lab the same way, i.e., with bold but
straight-up roman letters for vectors. Now I read in my new
_A_Guide_to_LaTeX_ that
-------begin quote from page 142-------
1. Simple variables are represented by italic letters.
2. Vectors are written in bold face italic.
3. Tensors of 2nd order and matrices may appear in a sans serif font.
4. The special numbers e, i, pi, as well as the differential operator d,
are to be _written_in_an_upright_font_ to emphasize that they are not
variables.
5. A measurement consisting of a number plus a dimension is an indivisible
unit, with a smaller than normal space between them. The dimension is in
an upright font.
-------end quote from page 142-------
These guidelines are confirmed by the NIST Special Publication 811 "Guide
for the Use of the International System of Units," which adds "these rules
imply that a subscript or superscript on a quantity symbol is in roman type
if it is descriptive (for example, if it is a number or represents the name
of a person or a particle); but it is in italic type if it represents a
quantity, or is a variable." Also, mu should be in roman type when it is
the SI prefix for micro and should be italic when it is the magnetic moment.
Items 2 and 4 are the ones that pertain to my question. Vectors should be
italic, but most of the first-year physics texts on my shelf don't have
italic vectors (Sears and Zemansky and Young and Freeman 10e does). But no
one seems to put the differential operator d in an upright font. Why not?
Another question is: should the cross product sign itself be bold? Sears
and Zemansky and Young and Freeman 10e do, but they also boldface some of
the equals signs and the integral signs in vector equations. Other
publishers have bold cross products but non-bold equals signs. Are there
official conventions for these? There seems to be little consistency
between texts and sometimes even within a text.