Suggestions for Notation and Printing

Extract

The list of suggestions issued by the London Mathematical Society is open to several amendments and possibly improvements.

1. The use of small fractions in the midst of letterpress is often open to the objection that such fractions are difficult to read, and, moreover, very often do not come out clearly in printing. It is especially difficult to distinguish 1/3 from 1/8, and the latter sometimes prints exactly like the former if the type does not ink properly or is slightly uneven. For this reason it would be better to confine the use of these fractions to such common forms as ¼, ½, ¾, 1/3 and to use the notation 18/22 for other fractions ; at any rate small fractions should not be used for both thirds and eighths, and as thirds are usually commoner, it would be well to restrict their use to these.