# How to use Palatino font for text and what about maths?

I would like to use Zapf's Palatino font for the text in my document, which also includes a lot of maths. And I would like a good font for the maths. This is a snapshot of what I am doing.

\documentclass[10pt,letterpaper]{memoir}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{mathpple}
\usepackage{upgreek}
\usepackage{mathpazo}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\chapter{Demo}

Some regular text. \lipsum[1]

Now for some maths.

\begin{displaymath}
P_{N-1 + m} = \frac{C}{N-{1} + m} \binom{N_{2} - N_{1}}{m}
\alpha^{m}\beta^{(N_{2} - N_{1}) -m}
\end{displaymath}

The number 27 is the sum of the first 5 odd prime numbers: $27 = 1+3+5+7+11$

\end{document}


To me the text and math fonts seem a good fit but the text does not look like Palatino.

• Try newpx instead of mathpazo. – Ulrike Fischer Aug 15 at 20:06
• I've seen a mention that Euler (you'd probably want eulervm) works good with Palatino. Another option is to tweak fourier or mathdesign. That is, if you want a different math font with your Palatino text font. – Oleg Lobachev Aug 15 at 20:30

I suggest that you not load the mathpple, mathpazo, and upgreek packages and, instead, load the newpxtext and newpxmath packages.

\documentclass[10pt,letterpaper]{memoir}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}
%\usepackage{mathpple}
%\usepackage{upgreek}
%\usepackage{mathpazo}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{newpxtext,newpxmath}

\begin{document}

Some regular text. \lipsum[2]

Now for some maths.
\begin{displaymath}
P_{N-1 + m} = \frac{C}{N-{1} + m} \binom{N_{2} - N_{1}}{m}\,
\alpha^{m}\beta^{(N_{2} - N_{1}) -m}
\end{displaymath}
The number 27 is the sum of the first 5 odd prime numbers: $27 = 1+3+5+7+11$.

$\alpha\beta\gamma\delta$ vs.\ $\upalpha\upbeta\upgamma\updelta$

\end{document}

• Thank you. Three good answers but I prefer the look from yours. – Peter Wilson Aug 16 at 17:24

You can also do this with OpenType fonts using unicode-math.

\documentclass[10pt,letterpaper]{memoir}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\usepackage{microtype}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\defaultfontfeatures{Scale=MatchLowercase}
\setmainfont{TeX Gyre Pagella}
\setmathfont{Asana Math}

\begin{document}

\chapter{Demo}

Some regular text. \lipsum[1]

Now for some maths.

\begin{displaymath}
P_{N-1 + m} = \frac{C}{N-{1} + m} \binom{N_{2} - N_{1}}{m}
\alpha^{m}\beta^{(N_{2} - N_{1}) -m}
\end{displaymath}

The number 27 is the sum of the first 5 odd prime numbers: $27 = 1+3+5+7+11$

\end{document}


With LuaLaTeX, including microtype will get you both font protrusion and font expansion, which cuts down on the amount of hyphenation substantially.

You can also substitute Palatino or Palatino Linotype as the main font if you have it, or TeX Gyre Pagella Math as the math font. A sans-serif font that matches well is Hermann Zapf’s Optima, and you might mix in some of Zapf’s Neo Euler in math mode (I like its upright letters and its script alphabet).

• Three good answers but I prefer the look from mico's answer. – Peter Wilson Aug 16 at 17:22
• @PeterWilson The glyphs are virtually identical, either way. (Pagella, Asana and newpx are all based on the same sources: URW’s Palladio and Young Ryu’s math font.) I’d recommend you use the answer you accepted with PDFTeX, and LuaLaTeX + unicode-math when you can. – Davislor Aug 16 at 18:18

I would avoid using TeX Gyre Pagella or newpxtext if small caps are to be used. The proportions of some of these small caps are off. This is particularly obvious for o.sc. Here O\textsc{o}o is compared for newpxtext with option largesc, TeX Gyre Pagella and mathpazo with option sc (or osf):

Without the largesc option, newpxtext is the same as Pagella. But the uniform scaling done by largesc cannot help with the intrinsic proportions of the letter (it is to wide for its height). For me the availability of bold/italic small caps does not compensate for this. Related discussion at https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/385262/140850.

When using pdflatex I use newpxmath together with my FPL fonts:

\usepackage[sc]{mathpazo} % or option osf
\usepackage{newpxmath}


When using xelatex or lualatex I either use the real Palatino (Linotype) for text or my FPL Neu:

\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmainfont{FPL Neu}
\setmathfont{Asana Math} % alternative: TeX Gyre Pagella Math


Here the O\textsc{o}o sequence and the improved @-sign from that font:

• Uhm, I might agree for the Gyre fonts, but I don't see problems with the newpx small caps. But +1 anyway :-) – campa Aug 16 at 9:23
• @campa The newpx small caps are taken from Pagella. You can scale them, but that does not fix the problems. see the new screen shots. – Ralf Stubner Aug 16 at 9:43
• Three good answers but I prefer the look from mico's answer. – Peter Wilson Aug 16 at 17:23