# Absolute Value Symbols

What is the "best LaTeX practices" for writing absolute value symbols? Are there any packages which provide good methods?

Some options include |x| and \mid x \mid, but I'm not sure which is best...

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\usepackage{amsmath}...$$\lvert x\rvert$$; \mid denotes a relation symbol and is wrong for the absolute value. –  egreg Jan 31 '12 at 23:45
Should I do $\usepackage{mathtools}...\DeclarePairedDelimiter{\vert}{\lvert}{\rvert} as per your answer to a previous question? tex.stackexchange.com/a/42274/9757 – jamaicanworm Jan 31 '12 at 23:47 It's a good possibility. It depends on how many absolute values you have in your document; for a couple I wouldn't bother. But \vert is not a good choice, as it's already defined. – egreg Jan 31 '12 at 23:50 Thanks! Why do people not just use the keyboard | symbol? – jamaicanworm Feb 1 '12 at 0:16 You can actually use |, but in some situations a certain care is needed. For instance $$|{-1}|=1$$ without the braces would come out wrong, while $$\lvert-1\rvert=1$$ surely gives correct output. – egreg Feb 1 '12 at 0:22 ## 4 Answers I have been using the code below using \DeclarePairedDelimiter from the mathtools package. Since I don't think I have a case where I don't want this to scale based on the parameter, I make use of Swap definition of starred and non-starred command so that the normal use will automatically scale, and the starred version won't: If you want it the other way around comment out the code between \makeatother...\makeatletter. \documentclass{article} \usepackage{mathtools} \DeclarePairedDelimiter\abs{\lvert}{\rvert}% \DeclarePairedDelimiter\norm{\lVert}{\rVert}% % Swap the definition of \abs* and \norm*, so that \abs % and \norm resizes the size of the brackets, and the % starred version does not. \makeatletter \let\oldabs\abs \def\abs{\@ifstar{\oldabs}{\oldabs*}} % \let\oldnorm\norm \def\norm{\@ifstar{\oldnorm}{\oldnorm*}} \makeatother \newcommand*{\Value}{\frac{1}{2}x^2}% \begin{document} $\abs{\Value} \quad \norm{\Value} \qquad\text{non-starred}$ $\abs*{\Value} \quad \norm*{\Value} \qquad\text{starred}\qquad$ \end{document}  - @egreg: Agreed. But I have not encountered that with \abs yet. BTW, I like your "always is generally wrong" :-) – Peter Grill Jan 31 '12 at 23:57 Thanks for the help! General point of interest: why do you use \dfrac instead of plain \frac? – jamaicanworm Feb 1 '12 at 0:08 @jamaicanworm: I used \dfrac in this case to make a larger fraction in inline mode. This is not normally recommended in inline mode as it breaks paragraph spacing. I will update the solution to remove that. – Peter Grill Feb 1 '12 at 0:16 There's a reason why it's preferable to use the *-version for the automatic resizing macro: always using \left and \right is wrong, in general. – egreg Oct 15 '12 at 17:24 +1, even though I have to say that this answer is not very skim-reading friendly with the huge "starred"/"non-starred" picture and the remark somewhere in the text "BTW, normal behaviour is the other way around". The question OTOH is one that makes everything in this thread very prone to being skim-read. – Christian Feb 27 '13 at 18:10 Note if you just use | you get mathord spacing, which is different from the spacing you'd get from paired mathopen/mathclose delimiters or from \left/\right even if \left/\right doesn't stretch the symbol. Personally I prefer the left/right spacing from mathinner here (even if @egreg says I'm generally wrong:-) \documentclass{amsart} \begin{document}$  \log|x||y|b   \log\left|x\right|\left|y\right|b   \log\mathopen|x\mathclose|\mathopen|y\mathclose|b \$

\end{document}


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For LyX users: maybe I have just overlooked how to do it correctly, but I couldn't find a way of doing this natively.

I thus used a 1x1-Matrix environment and set the kind to determinant. It might just be a hack, but it works fine in my usecase.

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One can also use commath package.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{commath}

\begin{document}
$\norm{a \vec{u}} = \abs{a} \, \norm{\vec{v}}$
\end{document}


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+1 for this one, as it includes the semantics and has a relatively short syntax. –  moose May 28 at 19:28