How about using a simple table with no header row, plus (optionally) math syntax for the symbols?
This forum's markdown doesn't do simple tables (as far as I can tell), but here's a pipe table as a partial example (pipe tables require a header row):
| Symbol |
Description |
| A_c |
Area of a circle [A sub c] |
| \pi |
Mathematical constant (= 3.14159 ...) |
| r |
Radius of a circle |
| r^2 |
Value of r squared |
| g_{variable} |
Growth rate of "variable" |
To achieve the overall indent, you could:
- add an empty column (hard to control width precisely, and sort of a hack)
- if your output is HTML, wrap the table in
<div> tags with some custom CSS applied to increase the left margin
- if your output is PDF, it may be better to just use a LaTeX table and take care of the indenting in LaTeX
Here's an example of #1:
| |
Symbol |
Description |
| |
A_c |
Area of a circle [A sub c] |
| |
\pi |
Mathematical constant (= 3.14159 ...) |
| |
r |
Radius of a circle |
| |
r^2 |
Value of r squared |
| |
g_{variable} |
Growth rate of "variable" |
And here's the markdown I used:
| Symbol | Description
-------|----------------|--------------------------------------
| $A_c$ | Area of a circle [A sub c]
| $\pi$ | Mathematical constant (= 3.14159 ...)
| $r$ | Radius of a circle
| $r^2$ | Value of r squared
| $g_{variable}$ | Growth rate of "variable"
---------------------------------------------------------------
ETA: One more option, if your output is HTML: use a raw-HTML description list, which has the benefit of being semantically appropriate to your task. You would need to make sure your CSS formatted it the way you want.