font size in math mode

Question

$\sum\limits_{\substack{locations \\ L_j}}$

The word locations is quite long - longer than the summation symbol Sigma.

I would like to control the size of only the word locations, but I am having trouble

1. $\sum\limits_{\substack{ locations \\ L_j}}$ has no effect on the size of locations.

2. \fontsize{0.5cm}{1pt}\selectfont $\sum\limits_{\substack{locations \\ L_j}}$ makes the summation symbol sigma smaller but not *locations

3. inserting \tiny, \scriptsize etc has no discernable affect. Nor does \text{\tiny locations}, etc.

Answer 1

Using \text{\tiny{locations}} does make it a bit smaller. To make it really small, you could try \scalebox.

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document} 
$\sum\limits_{\substack{\scalebox{0.5}{locations} \\ L_j}}$

$\sum\limits_{\substack{\text{\tiny{locations}} \\ L_j}}$

$\sum\limits_{\substack{\text{locations} \\ L_j}}$
\end{document}

Another option would be to use \mathclap from the mathtools package to horizontally smash locations. This allows the summand to appear on top of locations (so you don't get a big space after the sum.

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\begin{document}
$\sum\limits_{\substack{\mathclap{\text{locations}} \\ L_j}}$ A
\end{document}

However, I think the best option would be to define some notation to avoid this construction.

Let $\Lambda$ represent the set of all locations...

Answer 2

Good morning,

I suggest :

\sum\limits_{\substack{ {\scriptscriptstyle \text{locations}} \\ L_j}}{y}

In a more general manner, in math mode you can use \displaystyle ; \textstyle ; \scriptstyle and \scriptscriptstyle to control font size.

See http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Advanced_Mathematics#Changing_font_size for detailed article.

Answer 3

You can use \mbox:

$\sum\limits_{\substack{\mbox{\tiny {\emph{locations}}}\\ L_j}}$

Remove \emph if you do now want the text to be slanted.

Answer 4

One easy way I found to make math font smaller is to wrap a "_{ }" around your math/text - effectively making it a subscript of an invisible character.

In your case:

$\sum\limits_{ \substack{  _{locations} \\ L_j} }$