When a comment shows that an answer was updated and that there was minor formatting changes, what does this mean?

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2 Answers
Dec 15, 2017

It means someone (usually me) formatted your answer.

Explanation:

For starters, I don't speak for everyone here because "Minor formatting changes..." is just something that I say when I edit answers, but I usually use that comment after I tweak the math formatting on an answer ever so slightly.

In that particular case, I edited your answer to add hashtags to the math parts. You can read more about how the hashtags work here.

So basically, you had something like

5n - 8 = 27

and I went in and added a hashtag before and a hashtag after that line to get

#5n - 8 = 27#

A pretty minor formatting change, hence the comment :D

Dec 15, 2017

Someone has edited your answer to make it better.

Explanation:

So, let's take your photo as an example. It says, "Minor formatting changes".

What this means is, that you posted an answer that didn't use the formatting method.

What is the formatting methods?

Formatting methods are ways to write math better.

What are some examples?

This is an answer that doesn't use the proper formatting method.

"My answer was 64 because I found out that when you multiply both the first number and the last number you get it.
8
2-5/25+9."

That is an example of bad formatting. This is an example of good formatting,

"My answer was #6*4# because I found out that when you multiply both the first number and the last number you get it.
#8*2-5/25+9#."

You see the difference?

How do I acheive this?

What you can do is insert a [#] before and after the problem.

For more information you can check out this website.

https://socratic.org/help/symbols