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# [LaTeX] Delimiters

category: Writing | course: LaTeX Math | difficulty:
IN PRINT
QUICK CONTENTS:Intro
1. Custom Sizes

Lots of mathematical formulas have their components grouped, or have a useful shorthand notation that requires a part to be enclosed within so-called delimiters. The regular symbols, such as parentheses ( () ) and braces ( {} ) work, but don’t scale with the equation – a fraction, for example, is much taller than the symbols surrounding it, which looks ugly and messy.

To solve this, LaTeX provides the \left and \right commands. These need to be used together, always, and both need a certain delimiter right after it. In between them, you are allowed to use as many \middle commands with delimiters as you like. The possibilities are:

 Left Right Description Common Use ( ) Regular parentheses Grouping equations [ ] Regular brackets Alternative to grouping equations \{ \} Regular braces Denoting sets \langle \rangle Arrows Intervals or dot products | | Vertical lines Determinant or absolute value \| \| Double vertical lines Norm . . Empty delimiter Displays nothing \lfloor \rfloor Box with open top and gap in bottom side Rounding a number down \lceil \rceil Box with open bottom and gap in top side Rounding a number up \ulcorner \urcorner Smaller version of the previous command Rounding a number
\begin{equation*}
\left( \frac{2}{3} \right)
\end{equation*}
\begin{equation*}
\left| x+y \right|
\end{equation*}
\begin{equation*}
\left\{ x \in \mathbb{R}^3 \middle| x \not= 2 \right\}
\end{equation*}


## Custom Sizes

If you’re not satisfied with LaTeX stretching your delimiters to the correct length automatically, you can use the special symbol-sizing commands:

 Command Description \big Slightly bigger than normal \Big Even bigger \bigg Even bigger \Bigg Biggest

These also work for most other symbols, which you’ll learn in a later chapter. Note that these should be used instead of the \left and \right commands.

\begin{equation*}
%Yes, this looks awful, it's just for demonstrative purposes
\Bigg( \frac{2}{3} \big)
\end{equation*}

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