# Uppercase greek letters in math in italic/slanted format

I read that in math, capital Greek letters should be italic, just like all the other (Latin alphabet) letters. How do I do this? I use \usepackage[charter]{mathdesign} as my font.

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This is a style decision; some typographic tradition, for instance in France, want capital Greek in italics, others (British and American) want them upright. – egreg Oct 27 '12 at 15:00
@egreg isn't it rather that the French want their lowercase Greek upright? – jfbu Oct 27 '12 at 15:44
– amcnabb Sep 13 '13 at 20:09

According to the manual of mathdesign,

\usepackage[charter,greekuppercase=italicized]{mathdesign}


should do.

However, how the uppercase Greek letters should appear is a style decision and there's not a correct way. It mostly depends on the typographic tradition you're following.

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Thanks, that works! Regarding “correct“: I have the Python way of thinking: There should be one obvious way to do things. So I want people to read my stuff and immediately know what I meant. Since all latin and lowercase greek letters are in italic, it makes no sense to me that uppercase should not be in italic as well. And I can use \mathrm \Delta as a Laplace operator now, since \Delta looks different this way. – Martin Ueding Oct 27 '12 at 15:40
The italic shape of Latin letters is also a style decision and not an 'obvious' way of doing things. It is 'obvious' only to people who never thought they could do otherwise! – jfbu Oct 27 '12 at 15:49
Okay, then I'd have to look at it a little more flexibly. But I still think that it is more consistent (not right, granted), to have uppercase italic by default. – Martin Ueding Oct 27 '12 at 16:16