Strictly speaking, del is not a specific operator, but rather a convenient mathematical notation for those three operators that makes many equations easier to write and remember. The del symbol (or nabla) can be interpreted as a vector of partial derivative operators; and its three possible meanings—gradient, divergence, and curl—can be formally viewed as the product with a scalar, a dot product, and a cross product, respectively, of the "del operator" with the field. These formal products do not necessarily commute with other operators or products. These three uses, detailed below, are summarized as: