I do exactly what Joel Rauber described, including his preference for
arrows as opposed to bold.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton College
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu
Joel wrote...
(Small note: I'm a proponent of arrows over letters for vector
quantities instead of boldfacing. But I'll follow what you have done
above for ASCII
clarity.)
<bold>A</bold> = a vector
<bold>A_x</bold> = a component vector, John D's projection onto
<bold>i_hat</bold>
A_x = a scalar component = <bold>A</bold> dot <bold>i_hat</bold>
|A_x| = a positive scalar, the length of the component vector
<bold>A_x</bold>