Tutorial 7: Write math without learning a new language

Goal: get math into a document several different ways — picking a ready-made formula, typing one from scratch, and exploring one by ear — see it look right on screen, hand it to Word as a real equation (not a picture), and get it back again later, still editable. Thirty minutes, nothing to install. Built for anyone writing algebra — homework, lecture notes, a lab report — who has never used a "math typing" tool before and doesn't want a syntax lesson first.

You will not need to memorize anything before you start. The fastest path needs no typing at all; the next needs only ^ for a power; only the fancier formulas need a couple of extra words.

1. The easiest way in: pick a ready-made formula

QUILL ships ten common algebra and geometry formulas you can insert with no typing at all:

1. Open a document and type a line of context, like "The quadratic formula solves any equation of the form ax squared plus bx plus c equals zero:".
2. Insert > Snippet Gallery...
3. Find Quadratic Formula in the list and insert it.

Done — a correctly formatted equation lands in your document, nothing typed, nothing to get wrong. The gallery also has the Pythagorean Theorem, Slope-Intercept Form, Point-Slope Form, the Slope, Distance, and Midpoint formulas, Difference of Squares, and the Area and Circumference of a Circle. If the formula you need is one of these ten, you are already done with this tutorial — everything past this point is for formulas the gallery doesn't have, or for understanding what landed in your document.

2. Your first equation from scratch

For anything the gallery doesn't cover, typing one yourself is just as approachable:

1. Type a line of context, like "The Pythagorean theorem relates the sides of a right triangle:".
2. Press Ctrl+Shift+E (or Insert > Insert Equation...).
3. A box appears asking for the equation, and it even suggests an example right in the prompt (E=mc^2) so you can see the expected shape. Type:

   a^2 + b^2 = c^2

   That's it — ^ just means "to the power of." No backslashes, no codes, nothing to look up.
4. QUILL asks whether this should sit on its own line (Block) or flow inside a sentence (Inline). Since this formula deserves its own line, pick Block.
5. Look at what landed in your document: plain text, wrapped in $$ $$. Nothing mysterious happened — that's just how QUILL marks "this bit is math" so it can be typeset properly later. You can select it and press Ctrl+Shift+E again any time you want to change it, the same way you'd reopen any dialog.

Try a second one the same way, inline this time: type "the graph of a straight line follows", press Ctrl+Shift+E, type y = mx + b, and choose Inline so it stays in the sentence. Two equations in, and you still haven't typed anything you wouldn't type on a calculator.

3. When a formula needs a fraction or a square root

Some formulas — like the quadratic formula, if you type it yourself instead of using the gallery — have a fraction stacked over another expression, and a square root. For just these two, QUILL needs a small hint: put the top of a fraction in \frac{...}{...} and a square root in \sqrt{...}. That's genuinely all you need to learn; everything else stays exactly like before.

Press Ctrl+Shift+E and type:

x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}

\pm just means "plus or minus" — read it the same way you'd read it out loud. Choose Block. If you only remember one thing from this section, remember this: \frac{top}{bottom} and \sqrt{...}. Nothing else about plain equations changes.

4. A shortcut, once you're comfortable (totally optional)

Once the basics feel normal, here's a convenience worth knowing about: if you type a few of those backslash words while writing an ordinary sentence — not inside the equation box — QUILL turns them into the actual symbol right away. Type \pi (with a trailing space) and it becomes π. Type \ne and it becomes ≠. This is entirely optional — everything in Sections 1 through 3 works with or without it — but it's a fast way to drop a single symbol into a sentence without opening the equation box at all. It lives under Preferences > Editing > Insert Automation if you ever want to turn it off. A fuller list is in the reference section at the end.

5. See it look right

View > Browser Preview... — your equations show up as real typeset math: the fraction actually stacked, the square root actually drawn, ^2 actually raised. You are not expected to picture what $$...$$ means in your head; QUILL renders it for you, automatically, every time — this was checked directly against a real rendered page while writing this tutorial, not assumed.

6. Explore a formula's structure by ear

Reading a long formula start to finish, in one breath, is hard whether you are listening or looking. Select an equation (or type one fresh) and run Insert > Explore Equation Structure... — or press Ctrl+Shift+Grave, F directly from the keyboard, no menu required — to step through it one piece at a time instead.

Exactly how the keyboard works, start to finish:

1. Select x = \frac{-b \pm \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a} (or any equation) and run the command, or press Ctrl+Shift+Grave, F. If nothing is selected, a normal text box prompts you to type or paste one instead — Enter accepts it, Escape cancels the whole command before it starts.
2. QUILL speaks where you are ("Whole equation" the first time, or the current piece's name after that), then opens a standard single-selection list dialog with the current piece's contents as choices — for the whole equation above, that is x, equals, and the fraction. This is an ordinary Windows list box: Up/Down arrows move through the items, typing a letter jumps to the next item starting with it, and the list always ends with Read this part aloud, then Back up one level (only once you've descended at least one level), then Done exploring.
3. Enter, or the OK button, activates whichever item is highlighted:
   • Choosing a numbered piece (like the fraction) descends into it — QUILL speaks its name ("Fraction") and the list refreshes to show its pieces (Numerator, Denominator).
   • Read this part aloud speaks a full reading of exactly the piece you're currently on — e.g. "the square root of b squared minus 4 a c" — without the rest of the formula around it, then reopens the same list so you can keep exploring from where you were.
   • Back up one level moves to the parent piece and reopens the list there.
   • Done exploring closes the explorer and returns you to the editor.
4. Escape, or the Cancel button, at any point — on any list, at any depth — ends the whole session immediately, exactly like choosing Done exploring. It does not step back one level; Back up one level is the only way to retrace a step without exiting entirely.

This is a genuinely useful way to make sense of a formula piece by piece, but it's worth being precise about what it is: the stepping through numerator/denominator/base/exponent is always a plain, dependency-free structural walk — no download, no setup, works the moment you install QUILL. Read this part aloud is the one piece that can get richer: if you install the free MathCAT engine (Help > Download Optional Components... > MathCAT math speech engine, about 3 MB, one-time), that command switches from a template-built reading to the same natural-language math speech engine NVDA itself ships. Without it — or if MathCAT fails on a particular formula — the same command keeps working with the simpler built-in reading; nothing breaks either way. Neither path is the Nemeth or UEB math braille a dedicated screen-reader math engine produces on its own display. If you use JAWS, its own Math Viewer (on a native Word equation, after the export step below) gives you that fuller, braille-aware experience; QUILL's explorer is the fast, no-extra-software version for getting your bearings in a formula while you're still writing it.

7. Hand it to Word

File > Export > Word Document..., then open the result in Word (or LibreOffice). Click on the equation — it's a real, editable Word equation, the same kind you'd get from Word's own equation tools, not a picture and not stray text. That matters for anyone reading with a screen reader too: a real equation gets read as math; a picture of one doesn't get read at all. If you use JAWS, this is also the point where its own Math Viewer becomes available on the equation.

8. Get it back

Reopen that Word file later (File > Open...) and the equation comes back exactly as you typed it — still plain text you can select and edit with Ctrl+Shift+E, not frozen into anything. Handing a file back and forth with a professor or study partner who uses Word never loses the formula.

If something doesn't look right

• The preview still shows literal $$...$$ or \(...\) text. Check that both delimiters actually surround the formula with nothing missing — a stray character inside the equation (an unmatched { is the most common one) can stop it from being recognized as math. Reopen it with Ctrl+Shift+E to see and fix the plain LaTeX.
• A fraction or square root shows the raw \frac{}{} / \sqrt{} text instead of rendering. This almost always means a missing closing brace } — count that every { has a matching }.
• The equation looks fine in QUILL but not after exporting to Word. Reopen the exported file in QUILL (File > Open) — if the text comes back correctly, the formula itself was fine and the issue is in how the Word file is being viewed elsewhere (try a different Word-compatible viewer).

Quick reference

The ten gallery formulas (Insert > Snippet Gallery...): Quadratic Formula, Pythagorean Theorem, Slope-Intercept Form, Point-Slope Form, Slope Formula, Distance Formula, Midpoint Formula, Difference of Squares, Area of a Circle, Circumference of a Circle.

The typed shortcuts, in full. Type the code plus a trailing space or punctuation, anywhere in ordinary prose (not inside the equation box), and it becomes the symbol immediately. These are seeded from the DAISY-published Word Math AutoCorrect list (daisy.org/MSMathCodes), so if you've ever typed math in Word, the codes carry straight over. Every one of these can be turned off individually — or all at once — from Preferences > Editing > Insert Automation.

Operators

Relations

Sets and logic

Number sets

Greek letters

Note that case matters — \delta gives lowercase δ and \Delta gives uppercase Δ, the same way they're different symbols in math itself.

Calculus

Geometry and vectors

Miscellaneous

The routine worth adopting

Check the Snippet Gallery first — it covers more ground than you'd expect. For anything else, start with equations that only need ^, /, +, and -; reach for \frac{}{} and \sqrt{} only when a formula genuinely needs them. Use Explore Equation Structure when a formula is hard to hold in your head all at once. Check Browser Preview before you submit anything. Export to Word only when it actually needs to leave QUILL.

Want an equation explained instead of just typed? Select it and ask the AI menu's Math Tutor agent — it walks through what each part means and names the formula if it's a well-known one, without solving anything or changing your document.