# Short equals sign

I don't know much about font encodings in LaTeX, and I'm not running Xe(La)TeX. Does anyone know where I could find a shorter (as in: not as wide) equals sign? I use it in text, not in math, and it would be nice if it were as long as the hyphen symbol. I generally just use the standard Computer Modern fonts, but if the answer is to switch fonts or move to XeLaTex, I'd consider doing so.

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If there is not an existing symbol you can use \scalebox or \resizebox from the graphicx package. – Peter Grill May 26 '12 at 2:23
Related Question: Is there a wider equal sign?. – Peter Grill May 26 '12 at 4:03

graphicx allows for resizing things through \resizebox{<width>}{<height>}{<stuff>}. Here's what you could do:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/graphicx
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\shorteq}{%
\settowidth{\@tempdima}{-}% Width of hyphen
\resizebox{\@tempdima}{\height}{=}%
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
Here is a~-~hyphen, here is a~\shorteq~sign.\par
Here is a~-~hyphen, here is a~=~sign.
\end{document}


The above MWE provides \shorteq that squishes a = into the width of - of the prevailing font.

textcomp also provides \textdblhyphen which is similar, but different:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{textcomp}% http://ctan.org/pkg/textcomp
\begin{document}
Here is a~-~hyphen, here is a~\textdblhyphen~sign.\par
Here is a~-~hyphen, here is a~=~sign.
\end{document}

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Thank you! I like this answer because I can define the width of the equals as a multiple of the width of the hyphen. Looks great. – Natalie May 26 '12 at 15:20

You can define your symbol using two rules:

\documentclass{article}

\newcommand\textequal{%
\rule[.4ex]{4pt}{0.4pt}\llap{\rule[.7ex]{4pt}{0.4pt}}}

\begin{document}

text~\textequal~text

\end{document}


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If You have access to Unicode fonts you could also try U+FE66 (﹦) SMALL EQUALS SIGN compare (=|﹦) (In the fonts used by my browser in this web site SMALL EQUALS looks bigger than EQUALS, but mathematical typography isn't the strongest point about stackexchange:-)

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