I am very new to latex, but have spent hours trying without success to figure this out. I need symbols for both 4 and 5 vertically stacked dots. I know the commands for 1 dot (\cdot
), and 3 dots (\vdots
). It seems like one methods that I've read about here is to combine symbols, for example combining 4 single dots to create a 4 vertical dot symbol. But, I can't figure it out. Any help would be much appreciated.
2 Answers
Here's one way. The gap is controlled by the \setstackgap
macro; The whole thing can be raised or lowered with a \raisebox
; the number of dots in the stack are the space-separated argument of the stack.
Note: you could stack any characters as such, not just dots. If the [usestackEOL]
option is passed to the package, the EOL separator is no longer a space, but a \\
character.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{stackengine}
%\stackMath
\setstackgap{S}{1pt}
\begin{document}
$A \Shortstack{. . . .}B$
$A \raisebox{-1.2pt}{\Shortstack{. . . . .}}B$
$A \setstackgap{S}{.5pt}\Shortstack{. . . . .}B$
\end{document}
Here's another option, editing the definition of the original \vdots
.
\documentclass{scrartcl}
\makeatletter
\def\fourvdots{\vbox{\baselineskip1\p@ \lineskiplimit\z@
\kern6\p@\hbox{.}\hbox{.}\hbox{.}\hbox{.}}}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
$ a \vdots a \fourvdots a $
\end{document}
Changing the 1
in \baselineskip1\p@
you control the spacing.
-
1The
\kern 6\p@
at the top of\vdots
is intended to give a little extra space above it when used in a matrix of other array. You would not want it if this is to be used as a mathematical symbol, whether it is a binary operator, a relation or whatever. I've seen this question somewhere before; I can't recall where, but I do remember the symbol was some kind of relation or binary operation.– DanJun 25, 2014 at 20:29
\vdots
and see if you can tweak it to give you 4 or 5 dots.\documentclass
and the appropriate packages that sets up the problem. For now you can use the 3 dot version to show it, but depending on exactly how you intended to use this there may be alternate solutions.texdef vdots
from the command line, the output is:macro:->\vbox {\baselineskip 4\p@ \lineskiplimit \z@ \kern 6\p@ \hbox {.}\hbox {.}\hbox {.}}
. Perhaps this will help you or someone else as a starting point :) Welcome!