# How to write a letter “a” in Tex [duplicate]

This seems to be a fairly simple question. But I want to know how can I write the alphabet "a" in Latex as shown below: I cannot use the regular "a" in this case.

Thanks for any suggestion.

The working example is as follows:

\documentclass[11pt]{beamer}

% Setup appearance:

\setbeamersize{text margin left=4mm, text margin right=3mm}

%Pacakges
\usepackage{graphics}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{verbatim}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows,shapes}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\RequirePackage{atbegshi}
\usepackage{mathtools}% http://ctan.org/pkg/mathtools
\usetikzlibrary{arrows,shapes}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows,shapes}
\RequirePackage{atbegshi}
\graphicspath{./figures/}
\usepackage{ragged2e}
\justifying
\usepackage{empheq}

\mode<presentation>{}

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}[shrink=10]

\begin{equation*}
a_i(t,x) =
\frac{
\tikz[baseline]{
\node[fill=blue!20,anchor=base] (t1)
{$\int \limits_{0}^{\infty}{ \tau c_i(t,x,\tau )\partial \tau}$};
}}{
\tikz[baseline]{
\node[fill=red!20, ellipse,anchor=base] (t2)
{$\int \limits_{0}^{\infty} c_i(t,x,\tau) \partial \tau$};
}}
\end{equation*}

% Now it's time to draw some edges between the global nodes. Note that we
% have to apply the 'overlay' style.

\end{frame}
\end{document}


## marked as duplicate by cmhughes, Mensch, Jake, Stefan Kottwitz♦Mar 20 '13 at 21:40

• It's in math mode.See the difference with $a$ a in your document – percusse Mar 20 '13 at 20:08
• Could you clarify? You mean an italic single-storey 'a'? As opposed to the two-storey 'a' (<- e.g. this one)? Is it math mode or text mode? Why did you label the question beamer? Are you using this documentclass? – Count Zero Mar 20 '13 at 20:09
• perhaps you want to load beamer with mathseriff How to get Beamer Math to look like Article Math – cmhughes Mar 20 '13 at 20:21
• @ cmhughes: Loading the beamer with mathserif solved the problem. I had \documentclass[11pt]{beamer} but now when I add mathserif I cannot add [11pt]. How can I include both mathserif and [11pt] ? – Jdbaba Mar 20 '13 at 20:27