How to use different fonts inside Word Equation Editor, especially for tensor notations

Am I correct in assuming that it is impossible to change font inside MS Word Equation Editor? It seems that normal font changing tools have no effect there. (I’m using Word 2007.) In the Equation Editor settings, I can set the “default font”, but this appears to be the font setting. The repertoire of fonts probably depends on what fonts have been installed in the system, but it seems to consist of a small set of special fonts, all serif fonts.

My specific question is about tensor variables, since the ISO 80000-2 standard specifies that they shall be primarily written using an italic bold letter in a sans-serif font. How could I switch to a serif font just to use some tensor symbols there?

The only workaround I have found so far is to use Plane 1 characters such as MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL T (U+1D64F), which can be entered e.g. by typing 1D64F and then Alt X. This seems to work in Word 2007, but it’s rather clumsy. Is there a better way?

Jukka K. Korpela

Posted 2012-04-18T11:26:15.323

Reputation: 4 475

Answers

Normally, for characters other than Plane 1 (which is unicode), shortcuts can be customized and this makes it really convenient to customize your shortcut list for often-used characters, such as 'registered':

But for the Plane 1 characters, the 'Shortcut key' option is grayed out and you can't customize the shortcut.

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This means there's no way to enter unicode characters in MS Word other than typing its character code and pressing alt+X as you mentioned. The Microsoft Office help reference doesn't specify any other way either.

prrao

Posted 2012-04-18T11:26:15.323

Reputation: 1 007

The comment gave me the idea to test what we can do in Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC). It seems that it lets us assign a Plane 1 character to a key, by entering its UTF-16 code units using “U+” notation, like “U+D835 U+DE4F” (but not directly as “U+1D64F” even though it shows the assignment that way). This way, we could set up keyboard assignments where I could use e.g. normal “T” key to enter mathematical italic bold T, etc. (in any program). – Jukka K. Korpela – 2012-04-20T05:18:52.500

@JukkaK.Korpela that makes sense if you're using the Tensor T really often. Otherwise you're much better off just using the ugly way :) – prrao – 2012-04-20T12:22:35.340

To change font inside a formula, like you would do with normal text, you have to enclose the text in quotes:

Hitting spacebar after the "T" builds up the formula like this:

But the T can now be changed like normal text. For example:

Arial:

Comic Sans:

Impact:

Times new roman:

To get a shortcut to the font you want, I think you should be able to create a style with that font, and then a shortcut to that style. I am using Office 2016.

Rasmus Larsen

Posted 2012-04-18T11:26:15.323

Reputation: 306