7 Accents and Symbols

Laura Greenstreet

Latex’s plain text commands are also convenient for typesetting accents. For example:

$\text{Celui qui ne connait pas les langues \'etrang\`eres ne sait rien sur lui-m\^eme.}$
– Goethe

`[‌latex]\text{Celui qui ne connait pas les langues \'etrang\`eres ne sait rien sur lui-m\^eme. - Goethe} [/latex]`

Note that in Pressbooks, you will need to surround the sentence by `\text{}` for the text to format properly. The table below shows the Latex commands for some common accents.

 Grave: $\text{\'a}$ `\'a` Acute: $\text{\`a}$ `\`a` Circumflex: $\text{\^a}$ `\^a` Umlaut: $\text{\"a}$ `\"a` Tilde: $\text{\~a}$ `\~a` Macron: $\text{\=a}$ `\=a` Breve: $\text{\u{a}}$ `\u{a}` Cedilla: $\text{\c{a}}$ `\c{a}` Dot: $\text{\.a}$ `\.a`

Common symbols can also be typeset. Note that some symbols on the keyboard have a “\” command since the regular symbol has a special meaning in Latex. The symbols in the table below can be used in math and text mode.

 $\$ `\\$` $\dag$ `\dag` $\copyright$ `\C` $\%$ `\%` $\ddag$ `\ddag` $\texttrademark$ `\texttrademark` $\#$ `\#` $\P$ `\P` $\S$ `\S` $\{ \}$ `\{ \}` $\dots$ `\dots` $\checkmark$ `\checkmark`

Additional symbols and alphabets can be typeset by using packages, which are covered in the next section.