The Philosophers' Cocoon

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I'm a new grad student, and I'm wondering about the use of mathematical symbols like φ or Δ in analytic philosophy, like when papers say things like "for some proposition p that holds a disposition d to do φ under circumstances c…"

Is there an agreed-upon set of industry standards for when to use what symbol, or is it totally up to you? I've noticed that people like to use "w" for worlds, for example – is that a standard that you'll get frowned on for violating, or is it just easy to remember?

I do think using w is expected in the possible worlds case, but I'm not sure what other norms there are.

What do readers think?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Sometimes when I quote a passage from another philosopher, I'd like to remove a paragraph break without removing any words. How does one indicate this? I feel like both using and not using an ellipsis would be misleading.

Hmm…whenever I block quote long passages, I always leave in a paragraph break. But in cases where I'm merely quoting within the regular body text, I guess I think separating the relevant passages sort of "[like]" I am "[doing here]" is the way to go (as putting in an ellipsis sort of suggests a continuity of passages to me that doesn't exist across passages in different paragraphs. But maybe I'm overthinking things.

What do readers think?