# Handwritten R-like-kay

I need a handwritten "k" with a circle, the one which looks a bit like R.

I found few fancy fonts with such R-like-kay, say this one, but non of them can stay next to "\ell" in math formulas.

Maybe I have to make one my-self with METAFONT, but it seems to be stupid to learn it just for one letter, and I am sure this way I will produce something ugly.

I hope someone can help.

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Why don't you redefine \ell to use the same typeface as the calligraphic 'k'? –  Emre Apr 14 '11 at 18:26
I need to modify kay so it would look very different from \kappa, but would look nicely together with other Latin letters in the formulas (in particular \ell) –  Anton Petrunin Apr 14 '11 at 21:18
This seems compatible with my suggestion. –  Emre Apr 14 '11 at 21:18
@Emre, I need a new symbol, I do not want to redefine anything... –  Anton Petrunin Apr 14 '11 at 22:30
What he's suggesting is that you use "calligraphic k" (different from kappa), and then change \ell to become "calligraphic l" so k and l would look similar. –  drini Apr 15 '11 at 9:48

The problem is that math "k" and math "kappa" are pretty much the same, except kappa lacks the upper part. And this is confusing.

You mention a "differnet font" on your question, but the problem as you found, is that "text fonts" don't mix with "math fonts".

So an alternative would be use a different math font.

Here we use the "Zapf Chancery" math font to get a different "k" (left side). But it would look ugly next to \ell, so following Emre suggestion, we can redefine ell to become chancery's "l"

\DeclareMathAlphabet{\mathpzc}{OT1}{pzc}{m}{it}
\renewcommand{\ell}{\mathpzc{l}}
\newcommand{\kell}{\mathpzc{k}}
would create the k, l on the left side of the image.


In particular image 1 was done with

$$2\mathpzc{kl}\ell = 2k\kappa l$$


but defining/redefining kell/ell would make this easier to type. After all, the objective is to get a "math k" that looks different from kappa and this accomplishes.

If don't mind changing all math fonts, you can use \usepackage[math,condensed]{anttor} and get

for

$$2k \kappa \neq 2 l\ell$$


Unfortunately I don't know what would the proper way to create a "letter command" (like \kell or \fancyk) to get only the k using antykwa font as above.

EDIT: I've found \usepackage{fouriernc} also gives the R-like k, but with a more modern look

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Thank you, I made these experiments --- changing style does not work for me, and the symbols are very different from the standard style. –  Anton Petrunin Apr 16 '11 at 2:57