I have the following (quite horrible) equation in my thesis:
\begin{align*}
\frac{\partial^2}{\partial t_1^2} f(t_0,t_1) =
( \delta+2t_0+2t_1)^{\alpha( w-t_0+t_1 )-1} \cdot \bigl(
\frac{\partial^2}{\partial t_1^2}\alpha(w-t_0+t_1) \cdot ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) \cdot \log ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) +\\
\alpha'(w-t_0+t_1) \cdot 2 \cdot \log ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1)+
\alpha'(w-t_0+t_1) \cdot ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) \cdot \frac{2}{\delta+2t_0+2t_1} +\\
2 \frac{\partial}{\partial t_1} \alpha( w-t_0+t_1 ) \bigr) +
( \delta+2t_0+2t_1)^{\alpha( w-t_0+t_1 )-2}\cdot\\
\bigl( \frac{\partial}{\partial t_1} \alpha(w-t_0+t_1) \cdot ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) \cdot \log ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) + (\alpha (w-t_0+t_1) -2) \bigr) \cdot \\
\bigl( \alpha'(w -t_0+t_1) \cdot ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) \cdot \log ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) +
2\alpha( w-t_0+t_1)\bigr) = \\
( \delta+2t_0+2t_1)^{\alpha( w-t_0+t_1 )-1} \cdot \Bigl(
\frac{\partial^2}{\partial t_1^2}\alpha(w -t_0+t_1) \cdot ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) \cdot \log ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) +\\
2 \cdot \alpha'(w-t_0+t_1) \cdot \bigl( 2 + \log ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) \bigr) \Bigr) +
( \delta+2t_0+2t_1)^{\alpha( w-t_0+t_1)-2} \cdot \Bigl( \\
\alpha '(w-t_0+t_1) \cdot
(\delta + 2t_0+2t_1) \cdot \log (\delta + 2t_0+2t_1) +
\bigl(\alpha (w-t_0+t_1) -2) \bigr) \cdot
\bigl( \\
\alpha'(w-t_0+t_1) \cdot ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) \cdot \log ( \delta+2t_0+2t_1) +2\alpha( w-t_0+t_1)\bigr) \Bigr) < 0
\end{align*}
Using this exact piece of code, without any special formatting commands such as & or \[2mm] the resulting mathematical text is quite unreadable:
How would you format such equations in LaTeX and what would you say is good practice when typesetting such large equations?
align*
or use asplit
inside a display-math environment, but add breaks in places unlikely to throw your reader off. Break lines before plus signs, but after multiplication signs. For the latter, I think\times
is easier to parse than\cdot
, here. Also, use\left(
,\right)
for an automatic hierarchy in delimiter size; that will help your reader parse your equation.