3

I'm using the following snippet widely in one of my articles:

\begin{equation}
\left(\int\limits_{U_{s}}f(x)dx\right)^{2}
\end{equation}

enter image description here

As you can see, there's a small overlap that is slightly annoying. Its' presence depends on the limit of the integral, e.g. it disappears if U_s is replaced by U.

Questions are simple:

  1. Is the observed overlap bad from a typographic point of view?
  2. How can it be fixed? Adding a space manually works, of course, but there is probably an automatic solution.
2
  • 1
    I think many typography nuts prefer to use much smaller parentheses, not to use \left( and \right) but to experiment with ( \big( \Big( \bigg( \Bigg( until it looks just right. Feb 12, 2015 at 10:04
  • 1
    In general, I would agree with Henri's answer. But if you wanted to use \limits, I would do the manual adjustment in this way, \left(\int\limits_{~U_{s}}f(x)dx\right)^{2}, adding a space before the lower limit, because I don't like the default placement of \limits on the integral. Feb 12, 2015 at 12:24

2 Answers 2

4

I can't answer your first question for sure, but I personally find this overlap makes the integral harder to read when it is rendered small.

From a technical point of view, this is a TeX issue with the delimiter height. According to texdoc impatient, the height of the parenthesis is computed by TeX using the height of the content and two parameters.

\delimiterfactor gives the minimum ratio of the delimiter size to the vertical size of the subformula, and \delimitershortfall gives the maximum by which the height of the delimiter will be reduced from that of the vertical size of the subformula.

The default values of these parameters enforce that the parenthesis is a least 901/1000 times as high as its content, and that the difference does not exceed 5pt. You can avoid the overlap by either setting \delimiterfactor 1000 or \delimitershortfall 0pt.

For instance:

\def\myeq{\begin{equation}\left({\int\limits_{U_s}f(x)dx}\right)^{2}\end{equation}}
\myeq
\delimitershortfall 0pt
\myeq

will render as:

rendering

4

How about not using limits.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{equation}
  \left(\int_{U_{s}}f(x)dx\right)^{2}
\end{equation}
\end{document}

enter image description here

1
  • Probably the best solution, but I cannot use it: in Russian mathematical typography integral limits should be placed under the integral sign. Though I'll give it a shot in my publications in English, thank you.
    – tonytonov
    Feb 13, 2015 at 8:40

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