I believe the initial revisions were unclear or wrong. Now just unclear?

Find and relate an antiderivative to proving Cauchy's Integral Formula for a convex region

• FYI – user99914 Aug 15 '18 at 16:07
• @JohnMa EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE NOW. THANKS! – BCLC Aug 15 '18 at 23:59

Take a look around and look at well-received questions. They look different. I will give a list of concrete suggestions, but first I would like to talk about the bigger picture. MSE is a place for clear answers to clear questions. If I google a mathematical fact I need, more often then not the answer comes in the form of MSE. Questions asking for the verification of one's solution are already a rather uncomfortable fit and generate a good amount of debate; asking them well is already an uphill battle. But the general principle for making it fit is to make it easily searchable, concrete, and of as broad an interest as possible.

1. As of now, we cannot search text in pictures well, so don't put up pictures of text from books; write out what needs to be written.

2. Even if your question relates to a specific book, if the topic is not extremely narrow and really about the text at hand, there is no point in referring to Formula 4.27. For most readers, this is noise that makes things harder to read.

3. If you ask three questions, you are not really asking a question. If you cannot do that and are "broadly confused", you need tutoring, not a Q&A-site.

4. Use English. Just because there is a LaTex comment called \therefore that produces $\therefore$ doesn't mean you should use it. Just write "therefore". I'm also of the school of thought that banishes quantifiers to logic and purely formal math. There $\exists$ no good reason $\not~$ 2 write out quantifiers if you are writing for humans.

5. If you use chargon, do it right. "QED" is short for the Latin quod erat demonstrandum and translates to "what was to be shown." The phrase "QED that the function is a required antiderivative" makes no sense.

6. Provide context. Why are you reading that book? Is it a textbook in a course you take? Self-study? Something you need to understand for something else?

7. Don't crowd out other questions. Your question was edited 23 (!!!) times. Every time you edit it, it get's bumped up on the front page. And this is not even your only such question. If you are not mindful when you take up scarce resources such as space on the front page (let alone people's time), people will give you less leeway.

8. Related to overediting: Don't change a question after someone answered it. There are rare reasons when this is appropriate (and should be clearly marked in the edited question), but generally this is a big No No.

• God bless you. Thank you. As for the first sentence, I did. – BCLC Aug 16 '18 at 0:02
• Wait. This actually explains a lot. Is any of this in some thread of common mistakes in communication or writing in maths se? I think this would help a lot of users. The how to ask and other links you generously gave me in three private message seem more for SE in general rather than for maths SE specifically. – BCLC Aug 16 '18 at 0:05
• I'm sure this influenced by many meta posts I saw, but I don't recall there being a general thread on this. – Michael Greinecker Aug 16 '18 at 5:10
• sooooo why don't we have one? How was I supposed to the know these rules, say, #4, the one about symbols? I think some kind of thread about things like these would be extremely helpful. Your first sentence says to look at well-received questions. The thing is, how do I know why they are well-received? Basically, I don't know what I don't know. – BCLC Aug 16 '18 at 6:16
• @BCLC As for #4 specifically, I believe that minimizing the use of logical symbols is commonly accepted style for mathematical writing. See, e.g., this document about proof writing. – Robert D-B Aug 16 '18 at 16:05
• @rwbogl thanks! – BCLC Aug 16 '18 at 23:53
• Michael Greinecker♦ Also, wait so secondary schools are wrong for teaching students to use $\therefore$ and $\because$? I was taught the former but not the latter. In other schools, I see things like 'We have $x^2-x=0$. $\because x \ne 0, \therefore x=1$.' The second statement to me sounds grammatically incorrect, but now it's worse apparently because using symbols is actually, well, bad? – BCLC Aug 27 '18 at 6:33