I am trying to derive the taylor expansion for the potential $U(\vec r + \delta \vec r)$. The general expression for the taylor expansion is: $f(x)=\sum_{n=0}^{\infty}\frac{f^{(n)}(x_0)}{n!}(x-x_0)^n$. I am trying to derive the same expression as in the wikipedia article : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_structure#:~:text=This%20yields%20a,can%20be%20estimated%3A But my derivation is not proper and it's messy, with multiple punctuality mistakes etc. From my understanding the variable is $\delta\vec r$. So we need to derivate with respect to it. $U(\vec r + \delta \vec r)=U(\vec r + \delta \vec r)|_{\delta \vec r=0}(\delta \vec r'-\delta \vec r)^0 + \sum_i \frac{\partial}{\partial x_i}U(\vec r + \delta \vec r)|_{\delta \vec r=0}(\delta \vec x'_i-\delta x_i)^1|_{\delta x_i=0}+\frac 1 2\sum_{i,j}\frac{\partial}{\partial x_i}\frac{\partial}{\partial x_j}U(\vec r + \delta \vec r)|_{\delta \vec r=0}(\delta \vec x'_i-\delta x_i)^2|_{\delta x_i=0}(\delta \vec x'_j-\delta x_j)^2|_{\delta x_j=0} +...$ I have the following 3 questions for what I wrote above: 1- If we want to be precise, shouldn't I write $\frac{\partial}{\partial \delta x_i}$ instead of $\frac{\partial}{\partial x_i}$ ? Because if am writing $\frac{\partial}{\partial x_i}$ than it looks as if I am derivating with respect to $x_i$. 2- In the wikipedia article the 2nd term is written as the product of the Nabla operator and the potential, so a gradient. How do I cleanly produce that expression? 3- As you can see, in my 3rd term (order 2) the $\delta$'s are in power 2, but in the formula in wikipedia they are not. But if I am to abide by what the Taylor expansion formula writes than I do need to use power 2. So what's the deal?