# How can I get an lower-case “L” with a hooked tail [duplicate]

I'm marking up some text that includes "l" as a vector, so I'd like to be able to use a bold font. \mathbf{l} gives a straight up-and-down kind of l which looks like a 1 (one) or an I (capital "i"):

I don't want to use \ell because I don't want the loop and for some reason my system won't make the corresponding glyph bold for me.

What I'd like looks more like this:

What are my options?

• As regards the second reason for not using the symbol \ell, with amsmath, \boldsymbol\ell gives a bold \ell with the curly tail. – Andrew Swann May 31 '16 at 10:15
• @AndrewSwann I don't believe that this question is a duplicate: the answer you link to may well solve the problem, but the specific question isn't trivial and searching the site before asking didn't lead me to the question you suggest. – xnx May 31 '16 at 10:51

Ah - thanks to @Andrew Swann for his comment which led me to the correct answer. I was using \mathbf{l} when I should have been using \boldsymbol{l}.