Standard Form

I have gathered some common "Standard Form"s here for you..

Note: Standard Form is not the "correct form", just a handy agreed-upon style. You may find some other form to be more useful.

Standard Form of a Decimal Number

In Britain this is another name for Scientific Notation, where you write down a number this way:


In this example, 5326.6 is written as 5.3266 × 10 3 ,
because 5326.6 = 5.3266 × 1000 = 5.3266 × 10 3

In other countries it means "not in expanded form" (see Composing and Decomposing Numbers):

561 500 + 60 + 1
Standard Form Expanded Form

Standard Form of an Equation

The "Standard Form" of an equation is:

(some expression) = 0

In other words, "= 0" is on the right, and everything else is on the left.

Example: Put x 2 = 7 into Standard Form

Standard Form of a Polynomial

The "Standard Form" for writing down a polynomial is to put the terms with the highest degree first (like the "2" in x 2 if there is one variable).

Example: Put this in Standard Form:

3x 2 − 7 + 4x 3 + x 6

The highest degree is 6, so that goes first, then 3, 2 and then the constant last:

x 6 + 4x 3 + 3x 2 − 7

Also, within each term, it is nice to have the variables in alphabetical order (if it does not make things more confusing):

Example: Put this in Standard Form:

yzx 2 + 4yx 3

The highest degree is 3, so that goes first, also put the variables in alphabetical order

4x 3 y + 3x 2 yz

Standard Form of a Linear Equation

The "Standard Form" for writing down a Linear Equation is

A shouldn't be negative, A and B shouldn't both be zero, and A, B and C should be integers.

Example: Put this in Standard Form:

y = 3x + 2

Bring 3x to the left:

Multiply all by −1:

Note: A = 3, B = −1, C = −2

is sometimes called "Standard Form", but is more properly called the "General Form".

Standard Form of a Quadratic Equation

The "Standard Form" for writing down a Quadratic Equation is

(a not equal to zero)

Example: Put this in Standard Form:

x(x−1) = 3

Bring 3 to left:

Note: a = 1, b = −1, c = −3

Standard Form of a Circle Equation

With a circle like this:

The Standard Form is this:

(x−a) 2 + (y−b) 2 = r 2

See Circle Equations for more details.