Consider x € R.

Then the magnitude of x is known as it's absolute value and in general, shown by |x| and is explained as

Since the symbol   always shows the nonnegative square root of a, an alternate definition of |x| is |x|= √x² .

Geometrically, |x| shows the distance of number 'x' from the origin, measured along the number line. Similar as |x - a| shows the distance among a and x. There is other term to explain|x| as |x| = max {x, - x}.