How to decide when \left(
and \right)
are necessary?
Here is my code that shows various ways to format the same formulae:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Example 1.1:
\[
\frac12 \left( p + \frac{((a + b)^2 + c)^2}{2} \right)
\]
Example 1.2:
\[
\frac12 \left( p + \frac{\left( (a + b)^2 + c \right)^2}{2} \right)
\]
Example 1.3:
\[
\frac12 \left( p + \frac{\left( \left( a + b \right)^2 + c \right)^2}{2} \right)
\]
Example 2.1:
\[
\frac12 \left( p + \frac{((a + b)^2 + \frac12)^2}{2} \right)
\]
Example 2.2:
\[
\frac12 \left( p + \frac{\left( (a + b)^2 + \frac12 \right)^2}{2} \right)
\]
Example 2.3:
\[
\frac12 \left( p + \frac{\left( \left( a + b \right)^2 + \frac12 \right)^2}{2} \right)
\]
\end{document}
Here is the output:
Among examples 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3, is there a preferred format?
Among examples 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3, is there a preferred format?
How do you decide when we need to employ \left(
and \right)
to format formulas? Is it just a matter of taste or are there any typography rules for it?
\frac{1}{2} \biggl( p + \frac{\bigl( (a + b)^2 + \frac{1}{2} \bigr)^2}{2} \biggr)
or\frac{1}{2} \biggl( p + \frac{\bigl( (a + b)^2 + 1/2 \bigr)^2}{2} \biggr)
; that is, not a single\left...\right
pair…\left...\right
for “genuinely large” blocks of maths (matrices, for example). Try to use\bigl
,\bigr
, etc. based on the hierarchy of the nested parenthesized expressions (and to gain complete control on how large the delimiters should grow). This is indeed “just a matter of taste”, but there are good and bad taste. Also, it depends on the journal/editor style…\frac {1} {4} \bigl( 2p +....
and getting rid of the inner fraction leads to a much more readable thing, unless you want to highlight thatp +...
thing. Basically, the best way to typeset a math formula depends on the context, and where you want to out the accent... Including brackets' size.\frac{1}{2}
!!\setlength\textwidth{..}
instead of\setlength{\textwidth}{...}
but as it essentially is only happening due to low level parsing rules, it will often fail in latex2xx convertors eg conversion to html, as they do not have a full tex parser and normally expect some reasonable markup for the arguments.