Questions tagged [symbols]
{symbols} is about specific non-alphabetic symbols or math symbols, e.g., about looking-up, constructing, or using symbols. For questions about {fonts} or alphabetic {characters} use the respective tag instead.
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How does one insert a backslash or a tilde (~) into LaTeX?
How does one insert a "\" (backslash) into the text of a LaTeX document?
And how does one insert a "~" (tilde)? (If you insert \~, it will give you a tilde as an accent over the following letter.)
I ...
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How to look up a symbol or identify a letter from a math alphabet or other character?
I know what my symbol or character looks like, but I don't know what the command is or which math alphabet it came from. How do I go about finding this out?
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How can I get bold math symbols?
To make Latin-letter variables bold I can use e.g. \mathbf{a}, but while putting Greek letters or symbols such as \nabla inside \mathbf doesn't cause any errors or warnings, it also doesn't do ...
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What is the use of percent signs (%) at the end of lines? (Why is my macro creating extra space?)
I see that the code in many packages and examples contains percent signs % at the end of (many) lines. What are they used for? Do they affect the parsing of those lines?
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What is the LaTeX command for "em dash" (—)?
I am trying to insert the symbol in the title of the question, which I copied from a PDF article, but it appears as space in the output file. What is the corresponding LaTeX command?
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Absolute Value Symbols
What is the "best LaTeX practices" for writing absolute value symbols? Are there any packages which provide good methods?
Some options include |x| and \mid x \mid, but I'm not sure which is best...
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Why do the less than symbol (<) and the greater than symbol (>) appear wrong as upside down exclamation (¡) or question mark (¿)?
When typing < or > in LaTeX and compiling with pdflatex, the less than and greater than symbols appear at upside down exclamation points. I'm not in math mode.
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How to typeset the symbol “^” (caret/circumflex/hat)
I need to display the symbol '^'
d <- dist(fascores, method = "euclidean")^2
How do I do that?
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9
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Command for argmin or argmax?
How can you get the argmin or argmax in Latex? Two solutions I found are:
\underset{x}{\operatorname{argmax}}
\DeclareMathOperator*{\argmin}{arg\,min}
Any other ideas?
[1] http://www.breakthru....
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Good way to make \textcircled numbers?
This question led to a new package:
circledsteps
I'm trying to make some good-looking numbers in a circle, using the simple command:
\textcircled{1}
However, the circle is misaligned vertically ...
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260
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How to typeset $:=$ correctly?
I like to use $:=$ for "is defined to be equal to", but this is never typeset with the symmetry one would like, as the colon is always too low relatively to the equals sign. Is there any way of ...
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12
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What is the best symbol for vector/matrix transpose?
What is the best or most popular symbol for vector/matrix transpose? I have used simply ^T, for example $c^T x$. I think it is ugly, mainly because it is a little too big compared with vector ...
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4
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\mathbb{Z} yields undefined control sequence error
I am using WinEdt 6 for compiling my TeX documents. I am getting an error with contains the line $\mathbb{Z}$ showing that it is undefined control sequence. How should I rectify it? Should I include ...
- 2,463
232
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6
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Symbols instead of numbers as footnote markers
How can I make LaTeX use symbols (*, †, ‡, and so on) instead of numbers to mark footnotes? (The numbers are confusing because I use superscripted numbers for citations.)
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xmark that complements the ams checkmark
I am looking to have a xmark that complements the \checkmark symbol in the amsmath package. I've had a look at some in symbols-a4.pdf but can't seem to find the matching one! What symbol works well?
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Which dot character to use in which context?
Wikipedia lists several dot characters in Unicode. These are the ones that are ambiguous to me:
interpunct, middle dot (·) · · U+00B7 "midpoint (in typography)"
...
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227
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4
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Nice looking empty set?
I feel like the standard $\emptyset$ is ugly. By hand, my empty set symbol is a lot rounder, then this "slashed-zero"-type symbol.
Two questions:
Do people really use it (I mean people who have any ...
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7
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How to type special/accented letters in LaTeX?
How to type these special letters from European languages in latex?
ä, é, and L'?
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3
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'Floor' and 'ceiling' functions
Is there a convenient way to typeset the floor or ceiling of a number, without needing to separately code the left and right parts? For example, is there some way to do $\ceil{x}$ instead of $\lceil ...
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\mid, | (vertical bar), \vert, \lvert, \rvert, \divides
What's the difference between the different vertical bars?
$S = \{\, x \mid x \not= 17 \,\}$
$a \vert b$ implies $a \leq b$ when $b \ne 0$
$a|b$ implies $a \leq b$ when $b \ne 0$
$\lvert x \rvert$ is ...
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198
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5
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Escape character in LaTeX
I need to output the below text but since \ is a special character, I cannot:
[RegularExpression(@"\d+")]
Also sometimes I need use dollar sign $ as well but it seems to be a special char, too.
...
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195
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How to write N x N (with a multiplication symbol, for matrix dimensions)?
I need to write something like NxN in LaTeX but I do not get how... How to do such thing?
user4703
192
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4
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Show inline math as if it were display math (and vice versa)
I'm very familiar with how symbols display differently in inline mode (with $ ... $) vs. how display math shows them (with \[ ... \] or $$ ... $$). Two examples would be with limits
$\lim_{n\...
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2
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How to get rid of navigation symbols in beamer?
When creating presentations in beamer, those little symbols that you can click on and will take you to different parts of your presentation are automatically included on your slides.
I don't like ...
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189
votes
8
answers
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Correctly typesetting a tilde
How do I set the tilde (~) character correctly in LaTeX?
There’s a question discussing that on Stack Overflow, with a lot of answers. But dare I say it? They all suck:
\textasciitilde is too high,
\...
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188
votes
4
answers
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\Rightarrow vs. \implies, and "does not imply" symbol
Is it better to use \Rightarrow or \implies to symbolize logical implications? Why?
Also, if I write \not \Rightarrow, I get a symbol that means "does not imply." But if I type \not \implies, it ...
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187
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7
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Math symbol question: Vertical bar for ''evaluated at ...''
How do I insert the line "|" after the equation in LaTeX (see image below)?
I'm using LyX so if you can point me to the symbol of that line is also OK.
I don't know if this line has a proper name so ...
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Prettiest way to typeset "C++" (cplusplus)?
Writing "C++" in plain text results in an ugly setting, as the '+' signs are too big and too spaced:
I've seen around the web several marcos for typesetting the "C++" symbol, ranging from mild ...
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168
votes
5
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Real number symbol (UTF-8: ℝ) in XeTeX
How can I get the 'real number' sign (something like \mathbb{R} with the amssymb package in LaTeX) in XeTeX?
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Displaying the binomial coefficient symbol in math mode
The problem is caused by the symbol of binomial coefficient (symbol of Newton), often used in math:
{N}\choose{k}
In my document I have formula:
$$ P(A) = \sum P(\{ (e_1,...,e_N) \}) = {N}\choose{...
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7
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What is the best way to use quotation mark glyphs?
There are several types of quotation marks in the English language (and in other languages there are even more). There are also several ways in LaTeX to represent these. I have seen editors, that are ...
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3
answers
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How to get "LaTeX" symbol in document
I want to get that fancy LaTeX symbol to put in one of my documents but I cannot find it anywhere. All searching for things like latex symbol have not resulted in the symbol but other symbols.
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Is there a circle symbol?
Is there a circle symbol for the composition of two functions? Or do I have to resort to using other ways to represent that?
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What's the best way to write e-mail addresses?
When trying to write an e-mail address, there are always problems with the @ sign.
Solutions I've seen suggested are using some verbatim environment (more difficult in footnotes) and using a math-...
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How to write checkmark in latex [duplicate]
I want to put some checkmarks inside table cells.
I have put a cross sign using $\times$ but I really don't know how to write a checkmark in latex.
I used \usepackage{bbding} package and \checkmark ...
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Label equation with a symbol
I would like to label an equation with an arbitrary symbol, rather than a number, or letter. Is this possible?
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Importing a Single Symbol From a Different Font
Is there a general way to change the font of a particular symbol without switching packages?
For example, suppose I'm using Computer Modern for my entire document, but I want the "subset" operator to ...
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votes
8
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Smileys in LaTeX
I would like to include smileys in my LaTeX document. Is there any package with lots of different smileys?
In mnsymbol and wasysym, I found some general symbols:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{...
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9
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how to get good looking copyright and registered symbols
I'm trying to include copyright © or registered ® symbols in my document. However they look terrible! As far as I can tell it is generating a small caps letter with a big circle around it (not even ...
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How do I insert a backslash inside a mathematical statement?
I'm trying to write a set subtraction operation in an AMS formatted template. In the end, what I want should look like A\B. But I'm doing this in math-mode $A\B$ and this gives me errors. I've also ...
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How to escape the & (ampersand) character in BibTeX?
I would like to put a & character in a BibTeX publisher tag. Thus far I have tried:
\&
{&}
{\&}
"&"
with the full value enclosed in curly braces and double quotes. No matter what ...
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votes
1
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Question mark over equals sign [duplicate]
I'd like to have output an equals sign that has a small question mark over the top of it. (I'm proving an equation, but it is not obvious until the final step that the equation is true.)
Do I need to ...
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5
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Symbol for Gaussian distribution
What is the symbol for the normal density function in LaTeX?
asdf123
109
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3
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Logical "and" character in TeX (⋀)
I'm trying to write a logical syllogism in the form of ((a -> b) & (c -> a)) -> (c -> b). But I don't know how to write Logical And character. It's something like caret character (^), but not as a ...
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"inputenc Error: Unicode char \u8" error while trying to write a degree symbol (invisible character)
No matter how I try to do it I always get the following error :
! Package inputenc Error: Unicode char \u8: not set up for use with LaTeX.
I have tried using $^{\circ}$, \deg, \textdegree, ...
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votes
7
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Typeset an = with an ! above
I've seen an equals sign with a small exclamation mark on top being used to say "equals because of data that was given in the problem", for example for a boundary condition or initial value in a ...
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How can I write tilde ~ in math mode? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How to look up a symbol?
How does one insert a backslash or a tilde into LaTeX?
~ makes symbols after them 'phantoms'. I want just to write '~' in math mode and \~ doesn't ...
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105
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4
answers
186k
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How to insert a trademark symbol? (tm)
How do you insert a trademark symbol in LaTeX? That is, the "TM" superscript.
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5
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How to do the 'curvy L' for Lagrangian or Laplace Transforms?
I am new to TeX, working on it for about 2 months. Have not yet figured out how to script the 'curvy L' for Lagrangian and/or for Laplace Transforms.
As of now I am using the 'L' - which is not good! ...
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96
votes
2
answers
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bm package versus \boldsymbol
I'm typing a bold vector small x with a tilde sign above it. Now when I want to write its derivative, I'm putting a dot on top of everything. This is giving me problems and I found one solution:
\...
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