# What is the best-looking way to produce enlarged mathematical symbols in equation mode using lmodern?

I noticed that there is no way to produce a larger version of the summation symbol when writing equations. This

\usepackage{lmodern}

$$\sum$$


cannot be magnified using any commands. In looking for answers, I read that perhaps this is a bug, and the lmodern font does not contain any large versions of mathematical symbols. I am not sure if that is true. I have attempted to use some packages such as exscale to change this, but I have not been able to produce enlarged symbols, even if I remove lmodern. I do not want to make the entire equation larger -- JUST the summation symbol, for example.

I would like to keep the lmodern font, but simply scale up the symbols. Is there a way to do this that looks natural?

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• Welcome to TeX.SX! Please make your code compilable (if possible), or at least complete it with \documentclass{...}, the required \usepackage's, \begin{document}, and \end{document}. That may seem tedious to you, but think of the extra work it represents for TeX.SX users willing to give you a hand. Help them help you: remove that one hurdle between you and a solution to your problem. – Stefan Pinnow Feb 12 at 6:18
• Declare a math version. With the legacy toolchain, \DeclareMathVersion and then select a larger font. With unicode-math, \setmathfont[version=bigmath, Scale=1.25]{Latin Modern Math} or whatever settings you prefer. Sorry I don’t have the chance to turn this into a MWE right now. – Davislor Feb 12 at 7:11
• I could not use unicode-math since I am working with pdflatex. I have not used \DeclareMathVersion before, but I will see if I can find anything that will work for me. – Machinus Feb 12 at 14:49
• It seems that there is no way to increase the size of the symbols separately. DeclareMathVersion does not seem to work with pdflatex. And no solution I have found allows symbols to be enlarged individually -- it's always the entire section that has to be altered. – Machinus Feb 13 at 2:38