# I just want to write \Sha without ruining everything

I realize similar questions have been asked before but I am not satisfied with any of the answers I've seen. I would like to use the Cyrillic letter `Ш` to denote a particular group in mathematics. Most solutions involve using `OT2` or `T2A` encoding; for example, at http://math.berkeley.edu/~vojta/tex/samp-l/sha.html. However, this makes the other text in the document look bad.

For example, using the solution above, I get

while I would like to have

The first seems to be shaded strangely and the characters don't seem to align right.

Does anyone know how I can write the character `Ш` (in math mode) without changing the default font for the rest of the text?

• Welcome to TeX.SX! Did you see tex.stackexchange.com/questions/14633/…? The "shading" is probably due to the fact that you don't have the Type1 Cyrillic font. What TeX distribution are you using? – egreg Jul 19 '13 at 20:13
• @egreg Hi egreg, I did see that but I'm not completely satisfied. I would really like to use the default text, and the code there changes it to something quite like the first image. I am using MikTeX 2.9. Thank you! – user33931 Jul 19 '13 at 20:17
• The quality of the image is not really good. Can you add a minimal example of code? – egreg Jul 19 '13 at 20:18
• @egreg I am using the code from math.berkeley.edu/~vojta/tex/samp-l/sha.html – user33931 Jul 19 '13 at 20:20
• I don't see any blurring or "shading", both with Vojta's code and mine. Did you install the CM-Super package (for the T2A solution)? I really don't know what MiKTeX package provides the Type1 fonts for OT2. – egreg Jul 19 '13 at 20:27

for someone who wants to use just one or two cyrillic letters in math, in a computer modern setting, the old `wncy` fonts are still distributed in tex live as part of the `amsfonts` collection, in type 1 format. (but they don't require use of the `amsfonts` package.)

this is the recommendation in the ams author faq.

I want to use some cyrillic letters for math variables, but there isn't any LaTeX support for cyrillic in the AMSfonts packages. How do I do it?

The following four lines will load the upright cyrillic font and define `\Sh` to access the letter "Sha".

``````    \DeclareFontFamily{U}{wncy}{}
\DeclareFontShape{U}{wncy}{m}{n}{<->wncyr10}{}
\DeclareSymbolFont{mcy}{U}{wncy}{m}{n}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\Sh}{\mathord}{mcy}{"58}
``````

The location of a cyrillic letter in the `wncyr` font can be found by looking at the chart in the AMSFonts User's Guide or at a font chart created by TeXing the file `testfont.tex` (included in every TeX system).

the user's guide can be accessed with `texdoc amsfonts` or `texdoc amsfndoc`.

• This is exactly what's done in math.berkeley.edu/~vojta/tex/samp-l/sha.html that the OP linked, with the only difference that the U encoding is used instead of OT2. – egreg Jul 20 '13 at 7:06
• @egreg -- true, but this doesn't require `fontenc`. (some of us still live and work in the "dark ages".) – barbara beeton Jul 20 '13 at 13:41