Post #862083
2026-03-25 21:04 UTC
https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/37yyyz/comment/crssj4u
TIL the $ delimiters in latex were due to how expensive it was to typeset math, is this true??
Replies (3)
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@benjamingeer@piaille.fr 2026-03-25 21:22
@koronkebitch That’s hilarious! 😆 And it seems to be true: “Knuth explained in jest that he chose the dollar sign to indicate the beginning and end of mathematical mode in plain TeX because typesetting mathematics was traditionally supposed to be expensive.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX?wprov=sfti1#Operation
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@secretasianman@types.pl 2026-03-25 22:21
@koronkebitch typesetting math was really hard! Only certain Monotype keyboard operators were proficient at setting "six line math". Hand-setting math was even harder.
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@jhostert@mathstodon.xyz 2026-03-25 23:52
@koronkebitch So the block-sized math used to be uber-expensive?