How to change letter spacing / condense letters together

Question

I'm starting up with LaTeX today in order to be able to produce better-looking PDFs for university assignments. I'm working through a list of small exercises, handed out by a volunteer professor, and a certain one has stalled me a bit.

This is what I'm supposed to have in my output:

So, to tackle it, here's the code I wrote:

\section{\gt Άσκηση 1η} \gt
\fontsize{14}{16.8} \selectfont Α
\fontsize{16}{19.2} \selectfont Β
\fontsize{20}{24}   \selectfont Γ
\fontsize{24}{28.8} \selectfont Δ
\fontsize{28}{33.6} \selectfont Ε
\fontsize{32}{38.4} \selectfont Ζ
\fontsize{36}{43.2} \selectfont Η
\fontsize{40}{48}   \selectfont Θ 
\fontsize{44}{52.8} \selectfont Ι
\fontsize{40}{48}   \selectfont κ
\fontsize{36}{43.2} \selectfont λ
\fontsize{32}{38.4} \selectfont μ
\fontsize{28}{33.6} \selectfont ν
\fontsize{24}{28.8} \selectfont ξ
\fontsize{20}{24}   \selectfont ο
\fontsize{16}{19.2} \selectfont π

The output is, of course, the following:

Obviously I still have to do something for the letter spacing, condense them together. I've gone through at least 6 similar topics on tex.stackexchange and I haven't been able to solve it using the already proposed solutions.

Any help related to my question or with any problems in my code (maybe I've written redundant lines) would be greatly appreciated.

I'm using TeXStudio and MiKTeX.

Answer 1

This is homework, so I'll only give a hint: no \fontsize command is used, just standard documented commands.

It's obviously an exercise on the font size changing commands:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[greek]{babel}
\begin{document}
{\itshape
\tiny Α%
\scriptsize Β%
\footnotesize Γ%
\small Δ%
\normalsize Ε%
\large Ζ%
\Large Η%
\LARGE Θ%
\huge Ι%
\huge κ%
\LARGE λ%
\Large μ%
\large ν%
\normalsize ξ%
\small ο%
\footnotesize π%
\scriptsize ρ%
\tiny ς}
\end{document}

Answer 2

Manually changing the spacing between words is usually not required or recommended. I mention the spacing between words because, as David noted, you are adding unwanted spaces between your letters, and therefore each is treated as a word:

\fontsize{14}{16.8}[*space*]\selectfont Α[*space*]
\fontsize{16}{19.2}[*space*]\selectfont Β[*space*]
...

Also, as you already figured, a more sensible approach is to use the built-in size commands.

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english,greek]{babel}

\begin{document}
\textit{\scriptsize A\footnotesize B\small G\normalsize D\large E\Large Z\LARGE H\huge J\Huge I\Huge k\huge l\Large m\large n\normalsize x\small o\footnotesize p\scriptsize r\tiny s}
\end{document}

Answer 3

This question inspires me to create the following command, called \wavytext:

\usepackage{intcalc}

\newcounter{countwavytext}
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\@wavychar}[1]{%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=0\tiny#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=1\scriptsize#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=2\footnotesize#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=3\small#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=4\normalsize#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=5\large#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=6\Large#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=7\LARGE#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=8\huge#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=9\Huge#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=10\huge#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=11\LARGE#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=12\Large#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=13\large#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=14\normalsize#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=15\small#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=16\footnotesize#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=17\scriptsize#1\else%
\ifnum\intcalcMod{\value{countwavytext}}{19}=18\tiny#1\else%
\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi\fi%
\stepcounter{countwavytext}}
\newcommand{\wavytext}[1]{%
\@tempswafalse
    \@for\next:=#1\do
    {\if@tempswa\else%
    \@tempswatrue\fi%
    \@wavychar{\next}}%
}
\makeatother

The effect of the command is demonstrate as follow:

\textit{\wavytext{A,B,Γ,Δ,E,Ζ,Η,Θ,I,Κ,Λ,M,N,Ξ,O,Π,Ρ,Σ,Τ}}

\textit{\wavytext{α,β,γ,δ,ε,ζ,η,θ,ι,κ,λ,μ,ν,ξ,ο,π,ρ,σ,τ}}

produces

I am not satisfy by the current definition, though, as each character must be separated by ,. One possible solution is to redefine \@forloop and \@iforloop. But I guess that creates more troubles than it solves...