View source for Circumflex to Distinguish Variable Names

[[Category:Unpleasantness]]
[[Category:Variable Names]]

Some authors create new variable names by adorning well-known symbols (like \( A \)) with the upright (\( \hat{A} \)), read “A hat”, and inverted (\( \check{A} \)) circumflex, read as “A check”.  Depending on the font, these tiny diacritical marks can be hard to discern at a glance.  A particularly egregious example is found in Hinze 2012, [http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/ralf.hinze/LN.pdf "Generic Programming with Adjunctions"] (p. 5).

[[File:Hinze2012 adjunctions circumflex.png|frame|center|Hinze 2012, [http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/ralf.hinze/LN.pdf "Generic Programming with Adjunctions"] (p. 5) creates two new variable names by adorning the letter A with upright and inverted circumflex symbols.]]