# A bold plus symbol in math mode

I'd like to use a different + symbol in addition to + in math mode, preferably one which is just bolder than the standard one.

I'm currently using \pmb{+} from the amsbsy package, but it's a bit too lean for my taste, and it looks a bit pointy to the ends.

I am aware of \ding{58} from the pifont package, as well as \Plus from bbding, both of which seem to be non-math mode symbols, and look really bad next to math symbols.

Am I missing some other option to produce a bold +, apart from drawing the symbol myself?

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You can us bm to access the bold + from the font used for \boldmath (which in the standard setup is the font used for \bfseries in text.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{bm}

\begin{document}
\showoutput
$1 + 2 \bm{+} 3$
\end{document}


I caved in and went for the drawing option, which is shown below. Surely this is not optimal, as it does not adapt in any way to the font size used, which should probably be done by adjusting the scale factor. If there is any neat way to do so, it would be interesting to learn.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\newcommand{\Plus}{\mathord{\begin{tikzpicture}[baseline=0ex, line width=1, scale=0.13]
\draw (1,0) -- (1,2);
\draw (0,1) -- (2,1);
\end{tikzpicture}}}
\begin{document}
$A \Plus B$
\end{document}


• \newcommand{\Plus}{\mathord{\tikz\draw[line width=0.3ex, x=1ex, y=1ex] (0.5,0) -- (0.5,1)(0,0.5) -- (1,0.5);}} should scale with text size. – Martin - マーチン May 29 '14 at 5:47

You could use \boldsymbol:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}
\Huge
$+\boldsymbol{+}$
\end{document}


Unfortunately it's not that much bolder.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath,amsbsy}
\newcommand*{\myplus}{\ensuremath{\boldsymbol{\pmb{+}}}}
\begin{document}
$\boldsymbol{\pmb{+}}$ $\pmb{+}$
$\myplus$
\end{document}


Sorry, can't help for pointy ends! :)