Let be sets with orders , respectively. The dictionary order on the Cartesian product is defined as follows: For in , we say that if, for some , we have
Suppose we're working in with the dictionary order, then if we consider the two points the notationally the interval between them is as you can see the outer parenthesis form an interval but the inner ones are simply points, this becomes incredibly confusing so the notation is sometimes used to refer to points in .