# How to put circumflex accent in right position, math mode?

I would like to put a circumflex accent over the letter j when I am in math mode. I was supposed to use $\hat{j}$ but the accent is not exactly over the dot: that is really unpleasant.

What do I have to do to adjust it?

• Welcome to TeX.SE. Do you really want to keep the dot above the j letter. Try \hat{\jmath} rather
– user31729
May 13, 2017 at 6:24
• Thank you very much! Is it also posible to obtain a similar result keeping the dot?
– user133585
May 13, 2017 at 6:38
• Please always add a minimal but working example (MWE) to your question. A MWE is almost ever useful and sometimes essential. For this question best answer may depend on the font you are using and even the TeX format. May 13, 2017 at 7:09

With plain TeX you can use \skew, but the amount of skewing has to be determined case by case. Happily, once the amount has been found it can be made part of a definition.

$\hat{j}$ (normal)

$\skew{4.5}\hat{j}$ (with skew)

\bye


so a definition could be

\def\hatj{\skew{4.5}\hat{j}}


It also works with LaTeX:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}

$\hat{j}$ (normal)

$\skew{4.5}\hat{j}$ (with skew)

\end{document}


The output is exactly the same. In this case it's better doing

\newcommand{\hatj}{\skew{4.5}\hat{j}}


If you explicitly need j with dot plus hat then define

\def\hatj{\,\hat{\!j}}


and use \hatj in your document. The reason of this problem is that Knuth did not set the kerning pairs i-skew, j-skew in TeX font metric of cmmi10 font because he probably assumed that these dotted characters will never used with another math accents. The dot-less variants are available.

Note, that "skew" mentioned above is so called "skew character" (charcode 127 in cmmi10). Kerning with skew character controls the horizontal positions of math accents.

• I would add \ensuremath to the definition, so it would automatically switch to math mode if needed. Nevertheless: Good answer, up-voted. May 13, 2017 at 6:47
• \ensuremath is LaTeX specific. I am not using LaTeX specific things because there are people (like me) not using LaTeX. May 13, 2017 at 7:05