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I have an equation using fractions of fractions - much like

\frac{\frac{a}{b}}{\frac{c}{d}}

However, all of the fraction bars are the same width. I'd like to make the central bar wider than the others for improved readability. Is this possible? I've played around with shrinking the fond sizes of the numerator and denominator a bit, but that still doesn't improve readability.

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Can you post a minimal working example (MWE)? The output of \documentclass{article}\begin{document}$\frac{\frac{a}{b}}{\frac{c}{d}}$\end{do‌​cument} has different fraction bar lengths. Or didn't you mean the horizontal width but the line thickness? – Qrrbrbirlbel Oct 25 '12 at 14:00
When you say "width" do you mean "bar length" (horizontal width) or do you mean "bar thickness" (vertical width)? – TestSubject528491 Mar 11 at 4:54

3 Answers

up vote 11 down vote accepted

Some space can be added in the outer nominator/denominator, e.g.:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\[
  \frac{\,\frac{a}{b}\,}{\frac{c}{d}}
\]
\end{document}

Result

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2  
Oh yes it depends what was meant by "width" (English isn't very clear here) This changes the length (or width as you view it) of the line, whereas genfrac gives control over the thickness (which would be called the width of the line in other circumstances) – David Carlisle Oct 25 '12 at 14:27
up vote 10 down vote

You can use \genfrac from the amsmath package.

       \genfrac{left-delim}{right-delim}{thickness}{mathstyle}{numerator}{denominator}
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For orientation, the predefined values are about .4pt, .34pt and .24pt for text/display, script and scriptscript style respectively. – Qrrbrbirlbel Oct 25 '12 at 14:15
up vote 0 down vote

Making the line thicker using the TeX primitive:

\def\oover{\abovewithdelims...8pt}
$$ {a\over b} \oover {c\over d} $$
\bye

enter image description here

where the first . is the left delimiter, second the right, and the last argument is a dimension for the fraction bar thickness.

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