What is the degree symbol?

Question

In order to have the following output involving the degree symbol

I can try

\documentclass{report}
\begin{document}
The angle is 30$^\circ$.
\end{document}

However, this is an awkward manner to obtain the degree symbol - one reverts to math mode and casts an existing symbol into superscript.

Is there a straightforward way of obtaining the degree symbol?

Answer 1

I would use siunitx and so a semantic command:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{siunitx}
\begin{document}
The angle is \ang{30}.
\end{document}

But you can also load textcomp:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{siunitx}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\begin{document}
The angle is 
30\textdegree.
\end{document}

Answer 2

The following example code serves to show that siunitx uses the ugly $^\circ$ construction as well (for compatibility reasons). Most fonts have a degree symbol for angles (U+00B0 DEGREE SIGN) and some have a degree Celsius symbol for temperatures (U+2103 DEGREE CELSIUS, output by \textcelsius in my example) and these symbols usually would fit better to the line widths of the font.

My example also shows that the single degree symbol and the one included in the special degree Celsius glyph do not have to be the same, so I personally would redefine it accordingly when I'm using both in a piece of work, see the second line.

Compile with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{siunitx}

\begin{document}
°             % degree symbol
\si{\celsius} % ${}^{\circ}$
\textcelsius\ % special glyph of the font
\si{\degree}  % angle unit


\sisetup{
  math-celsius = °\text{C}, % for temperatures
  text-celsius = °C,
  math-degree = °, % for angles
  text-degree = °
}

°  
\si{\celsius} % now with the glyph
\textcelsius\ % special glyph of the font
\si{\degree}  % angle unit

\end{document}

Answer 3

There is also a gensymb package. I prefer it, since it provides just a symbol for both text/math modes, and you can do everything what you want with it.

Example:

\usepackage{gensymb}
% ...
$20 \degree$

Answer 4

The symbol is U+00B0 in Unicode, and the TS1 encoding contains it if you want to use legacy NFSS. The standard command for it is \textdegree and is defined by either textcomp or fontspec. You can also enter it in your UTF-8 source file, or use inputenc to declare a different input encoding. Virtually all text fonts support it.

Example:

\documentclass[varwidth]{standalone}
\usepackage{iftex}

\ifPDFTeX
  \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
  \usepackage{textcomp} % For TS1.
  \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} % The default since 2018.
\else
  \usepackage{fontspec}
\fi

\begin{document}
30\textdegree{} is hot.

20\textdegree{} is pleasing.

10\textdegree{} is not.

0\textdegree{} is freezing.
\end{document}

There is also \textcelsius for the character ℃ (U+2103), but (as of the last time I checked) to get PDFLaTeX to recognize the UTF-8 character on input, you must add the command \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{"2103}{\textcelsius}.

Answer 5

You can use ° directly with

\usepackage{textcomp}

Example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{textcomp}

\begin{document}    

I love 25 °C in my room

\end{document}

Answer 6

Using ^\circ is poor solution used in old days. Today, we have Unicode fonts. Almost all Unicode font supports the ° character. You can use it directly. For example in OpTeX:

\fontfam[lm]

I love 22\,°C in my room.

{\bf I love 22\,°C in my room.}

\bye

If you have complicated access to this character with your keyboard, you can define a macro for this. It is usual in TeX. For example

\fontfam[lm]
\def\deg{°}

I love 22\,\deg C in my room.

{\bf I love 22\,\deg C in my room.}

\bye

Answer 7

I would suggest a fairly short and simple solution, without using additional and/or special packages for that purpose. In the preamble define the following: \renewcommand{\deg}{$^\circ$}

As \deg is a reserved word, it must be redefined for this purpose. In my usage, I have not yet seen any obstacle to do that.

Later, in the text, you can simply type The angle is 30\deg.