Sometimes we want to think about the starting point of the vector as well. Not to confuse you, to get you used to both kinds of notation. Standard One last thing. It's always hard to discuss addition of vectors. But that is a definition that is easier to visualize than compute with.
Scalar multiplication is easier.
The best way to deal with vectors analytically is to break them into components, which means to express them in terms of standard vectors. The second notation is much more standard, and we will be using it almost exclusively. In terms of these components, it's easy to compute vector addition. There are a bunch of examples we will do of addition and scalar multiplication of vectors. If two forces are both acting on an object, the net, or resultant force, that the body feels is the vector sum of the two forces.