Many resources on LaTeX teach that "é" and "ä" are typeset with (respectively) \'{e}
and \"{a}
; and it is similar for other accent symbols. Are the braces really needed? Aren't \'e
and \"a
shorter but identical in functionality?
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With the right packages you can even type them in directly using your keyboard (or copy&paste).– doncherryJul 14, 2012 at 19:12
2 Answers
The manuals usually insist teaching a uniform syntax: all arguments will be braced. However, as far as TeX is concerned, a one letter (one token, to be precise) argument can in most cases be left without braces:
\"{a} \"a
will give exactly the same result. Not that I recommend it, but also
\begin{tabular}c
will result in a one column tabular
, just like \begin{tabular}{c}
. The braces for accented letters are really handy for \c
or \v
: writing
gar\c con
is clumsy and gar\c{c}on
is better. However, accents are more easily input using inputenc
facility. It's way easier to encode our documents with UTF-8, declaring
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
and then writing
garçon élève flügel čaj
The precise rule is:
when TeX is looking for an argument to a macro defined with
\newcommand
, if it finds a left brace{
, then the argument will be whatever is between this brace and the corresponding}
(at the same level); otherwise the first token (character or control sequence) will be the argument.
This explains why one can omit the first pair of braces in
\newcommand\foo{something}
which is perfectly equivalent to
\newcommand{\foo}{something}
Of course this is not valid for optional arguments, which always need to be enclosed in brackets [...]
.
Note: for BibTeX the situation is different (as nicely explained by Mico).
For bibliographies at least -- more specifically, for files that will be processed by BibTeX at some point -- it's very important to write the accented characters as {\'e}
and {\"a}
rather than as \'{e}
and \"{a}
(or, for that matter, as \'e
and \"a
).
For other examples of how to render accented characters in a manner that's robust to BibTeX's requirements see, e.g., this answer (shameless self-citation alert!).
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2Unfortunately, kerning is inhibited with
{\"a}
and friends unless you are using LuaTeX.– mhpJul 14, 2012 at 21:03 -
@mhp: I guess one's facing a choice between two negatives (when using BibTeX): either forego accented characters, or put up with some instances of less-than-optimal kerning of character pairs. Confronted with this choice, I suppose most users will put up with the latter, right?– MicoJul 14, 2012 at 21:47
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You can type e.g. {T\^y} which I think should maintain kerning. But this is problematic if T would affect the sort order. EDIT: That is, you can put the whole word in curly brackets (T\^y) rather than just the accented character (\^y).– cfrJan 3, 2014 at 1:05