# How can I add a list of mathematical variables to my appendix?

I would like to include a section in my appendix which shows a list of mathematical symbols, operators, etc. with a textual explanation right next to them. Ideally they should be separated by dots (like in the table of contents).

How can I achieve that? Is that what glossary is for?

Here is my current setup:

...
\appendix{}
\chapter{Appendix}
\section{Notation}
THIS IS WHERE THE LIST SHOULD APPEAR

\section{Appendix 2}
Lorem ipsum ...
...


EDIT: Some more code from my setup

\usepackage[section,numberedsection=autolabel,symbols]{glossaries}
...
\printglossary[type=main,style=long,nonumberlist]


And here my glossary entries

\newglossaryentry{pressure}
{
name={\ensuremath{p}},
description={Pressure}
}
\newglossaryentry{acceleration}
{
name={\ensuremath{g}},
description={Acceleration}
}

• Something like tex.stackexchange.com/questions/269565/… perhaps? glossaries can do this almost out of the box – user31729 Oct 14 '15 at 9:36
• That might be a good start. Thx for pointing it out! – user2426316 Oct 14 '15 at 9:47
• mmh.. the look is not really what I want. it gives me separate chapter headers and does go into my "notation" section. Is there any way I can make my own glossary. I just need a list of variables with their definitions ideally separated by dots – user2426316 Oct 14 '15 at 10:00
• Perhaps you should start first providing a MWE – user31729 Oct 14 '15 at 10:01
• You could also just define a tabular environment in the section, what would be against it? – JJM Driessen Oct 14 '15 at 10:21

Instead of automation, I went with a simple tabular (actually, a longtabu for multi-page compatibility). A \quad for indentation makes enough horizontal white space, manual \\[3pt] spacing to group the list by starting letter.

### MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{@{}ll@{}}
\textbf{Symbol} & \textbf{Description} \\
$a\in A$ & \textbf{arc} (directed) from vertex $v_i$ to $v_j$, set of arcs \\
$\phantom{a\in{}}A^\text{p}_{v}$ & \quad arriving arcs into vertex $v$ (\emph{predecessor}) \\
$\phantom{a\in{}}A^\text{s}_{v}$ & \quad leaving arcs from vertex $v$ (\emph{successor}) \\[3pt]
$b \in B_{e}$ & \textbf{building}, set of buildings along edge $e$ \\
$b_\text{eff}$ & concurrence effect (parameter) \\[3pt]
$c\in C$ & \textbf{commodity}, set of commodities \\[3pt]
$e\in E$ & \textbf{edge}, set of edges \\[3pt]
& \dots \\[3pt]
$v\in V$ & \textbf{vertex}, set of vertices
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

• This won't break over pages if the list is considerably longer – user31729 Oct 14 '15 at 13:11
• Indeed. As I wrote, I actually use the longtabu environment. For the sake of a MWE, I omitted the dependency. – ojdo Oct 14 '15 at 14:35