However, I don’t want to be embedding images if all I have to do is make reference to a variable within a paragraph of text… and I’ve never had a good solution.
This works nicely, and even though some people might think it’s a kludge, I kind of like the ability to retain the personality of my own handwriting in my technical documents. This has led me to apply what I like to call “agile shortcuts” - basically, I’ll write down the equation in my own handwriting, take a picture of it, and then use a paint program to crop and clean up my equation before inserting it into my document. And I have to type equations and expressions not often (like every sentence or every other sentence), but definitely regularly. I use Microsoft Word to prepare documents. This is how ILLUMINATED I felt when I figured out how to type statistical symbols in MS Word… the temple at Burning Man 2014.