How to interpret an expression when the radical doesn't extend over anything?

Question

I have a school assignment which includes solving this problem from a scanned document:

Equivalent:

Given that $m = { \sqrt{} l - n^2 \over n }$,
express $n$ in terms of $m$.

How do interpret this formula? Is it

1. $m = {\sqrt l - n^2 \over n}$ or
2. $m = {\sqrt{l - n^2} \over n}$?

As an aside, I can only find a solution when assuming it is 2.

Answer 1

I think it is inescapably ambiguous, so, as in comments, you can either ask your instructor how they want it interpreted, or give two different answers, with explanations about the ambiguity. Probably a typesetting error, but... :

One historical point is that people really have written something like $\sqrt{}\,2$, that is, without the horizontal bar part of the symbol, for $\sqrt{2}$, historically.