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I feel like the standard $\emptyset$ is ugly. By hand, my empty set symbol is a lot rounder, then this "slashed-zero"-type symbol.

Two questions:

  • Do people really use it (I mean people who have any sort of sense of aesthetics)?
  • What alternatives do you suggest?

I seem to recall something closer to what I'm looking for - a slash round-o - but the diameter of the circle seemed too small, I think. (And am I asking this in the right place?)

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  • 13
    I use \emptyset and don't like \varnothing, which is more a symbol for plumbers than mathematicians. :) Michael's advice is pretious: \renewcommand{\emptyset}{...} or \let\emptyset\???, so that you can easily change your mind.
    – egreg
    Jul 11, 2011 at 20:04
  • 5
    Regarding first question. Go to LaTeX Search and search for \emptyset. You'll get ~1000 docs using it (it is possibly a search limit), so I dare to say it is used.
    – przemoc
    Jul 11, 2011 at 20:08
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    egreg: tomayto, tomawto ;-)
    – Jérémie
    Jul 11, 2011 at 22:38
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    przemoc: you don't account for poor taste (said jokingly - mostly!).
    – Jérémie
    Jul 11, 2011 at 22:39
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    @Jérémie: If you want to reach particular commentator, i.e. be sure it will be notified about it, you have to precede username (at least using 3 first unambiguous characters) with @. Read details regarding it. BTW here I didn't have to address you directly, as you're the OP, so you would be notified anyway.
    – przemoc
    Jul 12, 2011 at 8:14

4 Answers 4

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277

Try \varnothing from the amssymb package. It is perfectly round, and the comprehensive LaTeX symbol list states that it is preferred by many to \emptyset.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amssymb}

\let\oldemptyset\emptyset
\let\emptyset\varnothing

\begin{document}
$\oldemptyset$ $\emptyset$
\end{document}

enter image description here

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  • 2
    Thank you very much, it's exactly the answer that I was looking for.
    – Jérémie
    Jul 11, 2011 at 22:39
  • 79
    Can we all agree that \phi and \Phi should never be used for this? Argh! ;-)
    – Colin Fraizer
    Jul 30, 2011 at 8:54
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    @ColinFraizer I can't believe it. Do people seriously use Phi for empty set? Shocking!
    – Alfredo Hernández
    May 16, 2013 at 15:22
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    Just wait until someone sees \phi and doesn't understand it's meant to be "empty set", and uses \varphi in his own documents. My engineering textbook was a nightmare.
    – Lazar Ljubenović
    Dec 1, 2013 at 11:22
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    @AlfredoHernández Unfortunately, yes. In the wild… (video should start at 4:03; offending statement at 4:17).
    – wchargin
    Nov 11, 2014 at 18:44
27

I always just use "\O" in math mode:

$\O$

enter image description here

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  • 8
    @ArunDebray, this must be what you're referring to: LaTeX Warning: Command \O invalid in math mode on input line 1006. I have so many warnings in my thesis document I don't even notice unless the output halts. Output does look fine though.
    – freb
    Mar 20, 2016 at 21:41
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    @freb Ignoring LaTeX warnings is a way to disaster...
    – yo'
    Jan 25, 2017 at 18:28
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    Note that Ø (aka \O) is the true origin of the symbol (see this answer ). To avoid the warnings, you can use the amsmath package and \text{\O} (or \text{Ø} if you use latin1 or utf8 encoding, plus a keyboard giving access to this letter). If you tired to type \text everywhere, \newcommand is your friend
    – Frédéric Grosshans
    Jul 17, 2017 at 14:59
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    IMHO, still the sexiest empty set on this page.
    – freb
    Jan 27, 2018 at 7:07
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    @yo' meh, I'm sure it depends on your use case. I wrote a 50+ page thesis with a million compiler errors but the resulting pdf was exactly what I wanted. So do I spend a few hours just to get clean compiler output? Do we serve the compiler or does it serve us?
    – eficker
    Apr 21, 2019 at 15:43
9

I find that { } (\{\} in LateX) is perfectly clear to mathematicians, maybe not to computer scientists. I would use the following:

enter image description here

This is obtained with

\usepackage{algorithm}
\usepackage{algpseudocode}
\begin{document}
\begin{algorithm}[H]
    \begin{algorithmic}[1]
    \State $myset \gets \{\}$
        \For{$i = 0\, \textbf{to}\, 4$}
            \State {$myset\gets myset\, ||\, (4 - i)$}\Comment{append $i$-th reversed index}
        \EndFor
    \end{algorithmic}
\end{document}

Using \emptyset would give

enter image description here This is obtained with

\begin{algorithm}[H]
\begin{algorithmic}[2]    
    \State $myset \gets \emptyset$
        \For{$i = 0\, \textbf{to}\, 4$}
            \State {$myset\gets myset\, ||\, (4 - i)$}\Comment{append $i$-th reversed index}
        \EndFor
    \end{algorithmic}
\end{algorithm}
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  • 12
    Why would computer scientists shun from {}. Most are fluent in some programming language(s), and that's the most common syntax for an empty collection. I always figured it would be the other way around.
    – Neowizard
    Jan 6, 2017 at 8:50
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    @Xi'an Sorry you fail to see. The questions were: Do people really use it (I mean people who have any sort of sense of aesthetics)? What alternatives do you suggest?
    – Marco Stamazza
    Aug 4, 2020 at 0:03
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    The question is about finding a more pleasing rendering of the empty set than \ emptyset, not using another symbol that is not commonly used in mathematics. The first and most voted answer brings a satisfactory solution.
    – Xi'an ні війні
    Aug 4, 2020 at 7:30
  • Do you really understand that from the question? Amazing the people one can meet on the Internet. In any case, I won't comment on this anymore, other readers can judge, if it worth their time.
    – Marco Stamazza
    Aug 6, 2020 at 2:14
  • @Neowizard In Python, both dictionaries and sets are created with braces, so they had to decide what {} meant and they made it the empty dictionary (though dict() achieves the same). Anyone familiar with Python, or any other language that made {} something other than a set, would have that as a reason for shunning {} as a synonym for the empty set in mathematics or Python's set().
    – J.G.
    May 26, 2022 at 15:48
4

The \diameter is an alternative for emptyset in lines, it is a bit tiny.

\usepackage{wasysym}
\emptyset\diameter

emptyset vs diameter

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  • 4
    diameter is another symbol, which is intended for ... diameters in mechanical engineering, plumbing, etc.
    – Frédéric Grosshans
    Jul 17, 2017 at 10:54

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