How to change the style of escaped symbols such as “\&”?

Question

Well, that's pretty it.

I was wondering if there's any way to change the default style of the escaped special characters, because sometimes I find them a bit "out of the line", especially \&, which appears slightly bigger and curvier than the usual &.

I know it's not that much of importance, but I find it quite unappealing in terms of aesthetics.

Answer 1

By default, \& is just & from the current font tex has no control over it. So choosing the shape of & is like choosing the shape of g: you just need to pick a font that you like.

However if you really want to change \& while keeping the same font then...

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\catcode`\&=12 % make & a normal punctuation character not a table cell separator


abc \& xyz   is the same as  abc & xyz.

Like g it shows a lot of variation

g &  \textit{g &}  \textsf{g &}  {\fontfamily{ptm}\selectfont g &}


But being a command you can redefin it to be anything

0  abc \& xyz

1\renewcommand\&{{\tiny&}}   abc \& xyz

2\renewcommand\&{\raisebox{-.3ex}{&}}   abc \& xyz

3\renewcommand\&{{\large\bfseries AND}}   abc \& xyz


\end{document}