By the Riesz-Markov-Kakutani representation theorem, the continuous dual space of is isometrically the space of finite regular Borel measures, signed for real scalars and complex for complex scalars:
Here is the variation measure, whose total mass is the total variation norm of a measure.
If in , evaluation at each gives . The Uniform boundedness principle also gives . For any , the dominated convergence theorem with respect to the finite positive measure yields
since pointwise and . Thus
The same proof works for complex squares, because the absolute-value domination remains valid.
Signed measure 2026-10-05
A signed measure is a countably additive real-valued set function, allowing negative values. A finite signed measure has a variation measure, whose total mass is its total variation norm of a measure.