# Write more beautiful math equations, like a professional book

I want to write math equations more "beautiful". My equations are shown as follows:

The vector looks ugly and disproportionate. And I like that they look it this way:

The vector looks good, in place and the letters clear and well defined.

• Use esvect package or bold faced characters. – kiss my armpit Oct 19 '13 at 16:37
• Conversely I find the latter very ugly and Word-like. So professional doesn't mean usual – percusse Oct 19 '13 at 16:53
• Why does the r in the latter have an arrow to represent it's a vector when it is already in boldface? It's quite confusing. The professional way of doing it is writing \vec{r}, which usually wouldn't let you something like \vec{\mathbf r}. – Manuel Oct 19 '13 at 17:37

A first note: The equations shown below represent an identical copy of the second expression shown by the OP. Since they are not correct, according to the accepted vector notation, I apologize in advance.

From the first equation it can be easily recognized that the \usepackage{palatino} and \usepackage{mathpazo}has been used, because of the typical italic setting, so with a basic MWE the bold faced variant could be defined as you like:

\documentclass{article}
%
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{palatino}
\usepackage{mathpazo}
%
\begin{document}
$\mathrm{d}\mathbf{r}=% \mathrm{d}x\hat{\mathbf{i}}+% \mathrm{d}y\hat{\mathbf{j}}+% \mathrm{d}z\hat{\mathbf{k}}$
\end{document}


Here is the (I hope it's beautiful enough) example output:

EDIT:

This workaround has been done by substituting mathpazo with newtxmath:

\documentclass{article}
%
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{palatino}
\usepackage{newtxmath}
%
\begin{document}
$\mathrm{d}\mathbf{r}=% \mathrm{d}x\hat{\mathbf{i}}+% \mathrm{d}y\hat{\mathbf{j}}+% \mathrm{d}z\hat{\mathbf{k}}$
\end{document}


As you can see the plus and equal sign are smaller by default. To change directly these operators inside the old font would require some kind of sorcery that at the end won't match a default setting.

• These days, mathpazo is only one of several LaTeX packages that provides Palatino-based text and math fonts. There's also pxfonts, newpx[text,math], and the TeX-Gyre tgpagella family, to name but three alternatives to mathpazo... – Mico Oct 19 '13 at 16:55
• Looks great! It's possible to change size of the plus sign? – Kiyoshi Oct 19 '13 at 16:56
• @Kiyoshi you could do this by changing the basic font to mathpazo to newtxmath, in such a way it'll be more roman-like. – alandella Oct 19 '13 at 16:58
• @AndreaL. - A quick note: newtx[math,text] loads a Times Roman-type font family. To get a Palatino font (which is what the OP may want), be sure to specify \newpx[math,text]. – Mico Oct 19 '13 at 17:05
• @Kiyoshi - I suppose you could specify \usepackage{newpxtext,newtxmath} to get your wish. However, the x-heights of the two font families aren't exactly the same, so the result may not be all that great. – Mico Oct 19 '13 at 17:06

You don't mention how the ugly-looking "r with arrow above" was created, but it looks like it was done with \overset{r}{\to}. If one uses \vec instead, one gets more normal looking arrows.

I would also recommend using "dotless" i and j unit vectors.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{newpxmath}
\begin{document}
$d\vec{r} = dx\hat{\imath} + dy\hat{\jmath} + dz\hat{k}$
\end{document}

• Even further, I would recommend dotless bold i and j. – Ingo Oct 22 '13 at 7:34
• @Ingo - I didn't go quite that far, i.e., I didn't explicitly recommend using bold dotless i's and j's, because I couldn't tell what the OP's method is for using boldface for the vectors (including \imath, \jmath, and k, with or without a \hat symbol). – Mico Oct 22 '13 at 8:57
\documentclass[preview,border=12pt]{standalone}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage[d]{esvect}

\newcommand\dd{\textrm{d}}

\newcommand\xhat{\,\hat{x}}
\newcommand\yhat{\,\hat{y}}
\newcommand\zhat{\,\hat{z}}

\newcommand\ihat{\,\hat{\imath}}
\newcommand\jhat{\,\hat{\jmath}}
\newcommand\khat{\,\hat{k}}

\newcommand\xu{\,\boldsymbol{x}}
\newcommand\yu{\,\boldsymbol{y}}
\newcommand\zu{\,\boldsymbol{z}}

\newcommand\iu{\,\boldsymbol{i}}
\newcommand\ju{\,\boldsymbol{j}}
\newcommand\ku{\,\boldsymbol{k}}

\begin{document}
\abovedisplayskip=0pt\relax
\begin{align}
\dd\vv{r} &=\dd x\xhat+\dd y\yhat+\dd z\zhat\\
\dd\vv{r} &=\dd x\ihat+\dd y\jhat+\dd z\khat\\
\dd\boldsymbol{r} &=\dd x\xu+\dd y\yu+\dd z\zu\\
\dd\boldsymbol{r} &=\dd x\iu+\dd y\ju+\dd z\ku
\end{align}
\end{document}


• OH my ghost, they look very professional, don't they? – kiss my armpit Oct 20 '13 at 6:31