 Standard polygon words for closed surfaces

Read a boundary word counterclockwise, giving every paired edge a label. A positive exponent means the edge arrow agrees with the boundary traversal, and an inverse means it disagrees. Identify equally labelled edges in their arrow directions. The sphere has a square word $ab{b}^{-1}{a}^{-1}$; the vertex count is three, giving Euler characteristic $3-2+1=2$. A closed orientable surface of genus $g\ge 1$ has wordA nonorientable surface which is the connected sum of surfaces of $k$ real projective planes has word $c_1{c}_1\cdots c_k{c}_k$. For $k=1$, this is a digon; the square word $abab$, identifying antipodal boundary points, is another model of the real projective plane. The Klein bottle has square word $ab{a}^{-1}b$, representing the nonorientable case $k=2$. The classification theorem for closed combinatorial surfaces says that these orientable and nonorientable families exhaust the connected closed cases.