Contents
1 Introduction
2 Capital letters-only font typefaces
3 Other mathematical fonts
4 Further reading
Introduction
Some mathematical elements need to be typeset using fonts containing characters/symbols of a certain style; for example, it is customary to represent real numbers with a blackboard bold font (such as \(\mathbb{R}\)), or topological spaces with calligraphic font (such as (\(\mathcal{T}\)). This article shows how to use different font styles when typesetting mathematics, starting with the following example:
Let \( \mathcal{T} \) be a topological space, a basis is defined as
\[
\mathcal{B} = \{B_{\alpha} \in \mathcal{T}\, |\, U = \bigcup B_{\alpha} \forall U \in \mathcal{T} \}
\]
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This example produces the following output:
Use of some math font styles requires the line \usepackage{amssymb} to be added to the document preamble: see the amsfonts package for further information.
Capital letters-only font typefaces
There are some font typefaces which support only a limited number of characters; these fonts usually denote some special sets. For instance, to display the R in blackboard bold typeface you can use \(\mathbb{R}\) to produce \(\mathbb{R}\). The following example shows calligraphic, fraktur and blackboard bold typefaces:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\begin{document}
\begin{align*}
RQSZ \\
\mathcal{RQSZ} \\
\mathfrak{RQSZ} \\
\mathbb{RQSZ}
\end{align*}
\end{document}
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This example produces the following output:
Other mathematical fonts
It is possible to set a different font family for a complete mathematical expression:
\begin{align*}
3x^2 \in R \subset Q \\
\mathnormal{3x^2 \in R \subset Q} \\
\mathrm{3x^2 \in R \subset Q} \\
\mathit{3x^2 \in R \subset Q} \\
\mathbf{3x^2 \in R \subset Q} \\
\mathsf{3x^2 \in R \subset Q} \\
\mathtt{3x^2 \in R \subset Q}
\end{align*}
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This example produces the following output:
In this case, not only letters but all characters change their appearance; for example, $\mathit{3x^2}$ italicises the entire expression to produce \(\mathit{3x^2}\).
Further reading
For more information see
amsfonts package documentation
Mathematical expressions
Subscripts and superscripts
Bold, italics and underlining
Font sizes, families, and styles
Font typefaces
Text alignment
The not so short introduction to LaTeX2ε