Newbie question: Within the body of the text that I've inserted into a Journal's Latex Template, I don't understand why I get a newline and italicized font when I add the command \leq to generate "less than or equal to"...
Below is (1) the Journal's template preamble and (2) my text in the body of the document.
I'm using MacText/TexShop on MacOSx10.6
(1) PREAMBLE
\NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}[1995/12/01]
\documentclass[10pt]{bmc_article}
% Load packages
\usepackage{cite} % Make references as [1-4], not [1,2,3,4]
\usepackage{url} % Formatting web addresses
\usepackage{ifthen} % Conditional
\usepackage{multicol} %Columns
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} %unicode support
%\usepackage[applemac]{inputenc} %applemac support if unicode package fails
%\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} %UNIX support if unicode package fails
\usepackage{times} %so today's date appears on each version
\urlstyle{rm}
\def\includegraphic{}
\def\includegraphics{}
\setlength{\topmargin}{0.0cm}
\setlength{\textheight}{21.5cm}
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0cm}
\setlength{\textwidth}{16.5cm}
\setlength{\columnsep}{0.6cm}
\newboolean{publ}
(2) IN THE BODY OF THE DOCUMENT .tex
coefficients kappa: \leq 0.4 poor to fair; 0.6 moderate agreement.
in Typeset: this pdf reads
coefficients kappa:
<={italics}0.4poortofair;0.6moderateagreement