# Parentheses size on mathpazo

I noticed that using the font mathpazo the parentheses done with \big(,\big) or with \left( and \right) on a mid sized expression are larger than necessary and definitely larger than the corresponding ones with the default math font.

Similarly, other delimiters are too large as well. For example, the f(x)\big|_{x\to 0} gives a nice looking expression with the default font, whereas it has a vertical bar too big in mathpazo. There's no in between: by removing \big the bar is of normal size and thus too small.

Is there any way to manually choose the size of the delimiters? Or, alternatively, do you know a font that looks similar to mathpazo but doesn't have this issue?

• Obviously this issue will happen for all fonts, hence \big, \bigg.... are the fixed size, but \left and \right will enclose the entire set, which size is surely higher than the \big... – MadyYuvi May 27 at 15:03
• @MadyYuvi I'm not sure I understand what you mean. My point was that with \left using mathpazo the parentheses do not adapt well to the text but are a bit too large than necessary. Whereas for \big already the smallest option is too big. – MannyC May 27 at 15:11

You could use newpxmath and mathalpha with option bb=pazo.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{newpxtext}
\usepackage{newpxmath}
\usepackage[bb=pazo]{mathalpha}
\begin{document}
$\mathbb{T}_1 = 8 \bigl( \mathbb{T}_1^0 + \mathbb{T}_{16}^0 \bigr), \qquad f(x) \bigr\rvert_{x\to 0}$
\end{document}


To compare the size of delimiters, where's the output of the same document, but without newpxtext, newpxmath and mathalpha, and with amssymb for the blackboard bold alphabet.

Note also that you should not use \big, but instead you should use \bigl and \bigr for left and right delimiters respectively.

• +1 because it solves the problem I asked, however I'll wait before accepting because I don't like the \mathcal font of that package, so I won't probably adopt this solution. Thanks though! – MannyC May 27 at 15:25
• @MannyC You can easily change the mathcal font (also mathscr and mathfrak) with mathalpha. It's explained in the documentation of the package, with examples of all the fonts it allows to use. There are many available fonts with this package, so you will probably find one that you like. – Vincent May 27 at 15:36
• Oh wow, that's awesome. Will do that later and then accept! P.S. Thanks also for the tip \bigl vs. \big. – MannyC May 27 at 15:37

I'll add an alternative way for whomever will come across the same problem and want to stick with the mathpazo font.

The problem is that mathpazo does not have the characters for the sizes that I want, but it suffices to apply a rescaling by hand. This, by the way, only solves the issue for \big, \bigl etc. and not for \left/\right.

I took this code from Stefan Kottwitz's answer on this forum.. Basically one can define a new parenthesis size as follows

\newcommand*{\bigs}[1]{\scalebox{1.1}{\ensuremath#1}} %1.1 is the scale factor