Distinguishing between comma in list of numbers and in text

Question

I am writing the following mathematical definition:

... where for $i=1,\dotsc,n$, $Ag_i=(AS_i,\mathscr{K}_i)$, ...

which produces:

enter image description here

There are two kind of commas, one in 1, …, n and the other after n which is in text. How is it possible to make the two kinds of commas distinguishable so then it does not appear as though there is a missing formula after n.

The best way is to add some text between the list of numbers and $Ag_i=...$ , or inverting: where $Ag_i=...$, for $i=1,\dots,n$. Note that you don't need \dotsc, only \dots suffices because it's smart enough to see a comma follows and adjust itself. — egreg, Sep 24 '13 at 10:06
@egreg Thanks. Because of the structure of the sentence I cannot change the order of the two elements (since there are more conditions after Agi=(ASi,Ki)). Thanks for the tip on dotsc. I'll change it. — Ali, Sep 24 '13 at 10:32
If I don't find any way of making the two types of commas more distinguishable and different, then I think using ; would be the best solution. Thanks. — Ali, Sep 24 '13 at 13:28
Related: Math Spacing in the presence of a trailing/non-trailing comma — Qrrbrbirlbel, Sep 24 '13 at 14:22

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 24 '13 at 15:41

There are not many possibilities to distinguish these commas. As you can see, the math-mode and text-mode comma looks the same. You could redefine the font for the math-mode comma or set the single appearing text-mode comma locally in an other font, but that will look weird, I guess.

I am collecting the comments together with my own thoughts for other possibilities:

invert the sentence to get text between the two mathematical expressions
use some other text separator such as the semicolon
use some other math separator such as slash or semicolon
separate the first mathematical expression by brackets where (for $i=1,\dots,n$) $Ag_i=(AS_i,\mathscr{K}_i)$, or other stuff is ...
add some space with \quad or \qquad behind the first mathematical expressions to get a bigger visual separation

All this points are not really beautiful and as you tagged with "typography", you should consider to do, what I would do.

Rewrite the whole sentence. It is not forbidden to split in several sentences and to guide the reader through your text. This could look like:

In the following, I will present some formulae, including the counter $i$ which is defined as $i=1,\dotsc,n$. The possible formulae are $Ag_i=(AS_i,\mathscr{K}_i)$, ...

Distinguishing between comma in list of numbers and in text

1 Answers1