How to look up a symbol or identify a letter from a math alphabet or other character?

Theres lots of ways of doing this, but the two I've found to be most useful are these:

Detexify Allows you to draw the symbol, and then guesses based on similar symbols. This is great for me because I don't always remember the name of the symbol, and even if I know the name, I may not have the correct name.

AMS LaTeX Short Math Guide This short pdf gives an overview of AMS LaTeX functionality, and includes a pretty thorough list of most of the math symbols (un)commonly used in proofs and formulas.

4 years ago

The old school way is to look it up in the Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List (warning: 4 MB PDF file).

The new hotness is to use DeTeXify which uses handwriting recognition to look the symbol up for you.

DeTeXify even comes in an iPhone/Andriod app- you can get a free version or pay for one. The only difference is that with the paid app you are making a donation to the developer- the feature set is exactly the same.

The author is planning to work on a mobile version of the website that will supplant these apps.

4 years ago