How to insert characters with special meaning into a document

Question

I was trying to add the symbol ^ in the document and getting error. How could I do that

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello world
\^
\end{document}

I need to add \,$... to document

Answer 1

If you write \^, then tex assumes you’re trying to write a circumflex on top of something and looks for that something. The first thing it finds in your code is the \end of \end{document}, in which case, it doesn’t find an \end{document} command (just {document}).

You can get around this by giving \^ a “null” argument: \^{}. Or, more cumbersomely, you can write \textasciicircum, for a full-size circumflex (in T1, at least).

Different packages offer variants. For instance, the \upp of wsuipa is a little more pointed, from memory.

Answer 2

depending what you want to do

\verb|^|   \verb|\|   

or

 \textasciicircum
 \textasciibackslash
 \$

Note \textasciibackslash works better after \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} as the default OT1 encoded fonts do not have this character (except tt) so the character is taken from the math fonts in that case).

Answer 3

You can insert most of the symbols by escaping them with the \: \$, \&, \%, etc. Some have special instructions: \textbackslash for the backslash.

Are you sure you need the ^? Maybe the \wedge is more suitable.

For more symbols, have a look at The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List

Answer 4

The "circumflex" accent, ^, is generally meant to be placed above some other character, e.g., e or E. If you want to display it by itself, you must add something like a "null" (empty) group:

\^{}, \^\null 

On methods for displaying some of TeX's other "special-meaning" symbols, see, e.g., Table 1 of the Comprehensive LaTeX symbol list.

Answer 5

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello world
$\wedge$,  \textbackslash\, \$
\end{document}