Inserting symbols

LaTeX provides many commands for mathematical and non-mathematical symbols. Please see this article for an overview of how you can insert symbols directly using LaTeX commands. To make it easier to find and insert the right LaTeX symbol command, Overleaf provides a Symbol Palette that allows you to choose from an array of commonly used symbols to insert.

Using the Symbol Palette

The Symbol Palette is a premium feature. To open the Symbol Palette, click the Ω button, which is visible when using the Code Editor or Visual Editor:

The Symbol Palette will open at the bottom of the editor window.

The Overleaf Symbol Palette

To close the Symbol Palette, click the Ω button again, or use the X symbol located on the palette.

Video demonstration

The Symbol Palette has a selection of commonly-used mathematical symbols you can browse or search by typing their name or an alias into the Search box. All symbols contained in the Symbol Palette are designed for use within mathematical content, which means they need to be inserted at a point where the LaTeX document compiler will be in math mode.

Math mode

Symbols shown in the Symbol Palette should only be inserted into your document when LaTeX is in math mode, which means they must be enclosed within special math markup:

• To put your equation in inline mode, enclose it within the delimiters: \( \) or $ $. You can also place it within the math environment: \begin{math} \end{math}.

• To put your equation in display math mode, use either \[ \] or \begin{equation} \end{equation}.

This also applies to symbols such as subscripts (_), integrals (\int), Greek letters (\alpha, \beta, \delta) and modifiers (\vec{x}, \tilde{x}).

If you’d like to learn more about math mode, we have a short explanation here. For a more general overview of writing math in LaTeX , check out Learn LaTeX in 30 minutes—in particular, the section Adding math to LaTeX.

If you add one of these symbols outside of math mode, you will see some errors when compiling your document. The error you will see depends on what else is in your document, but a common error triggered by math symbols used outside of math mode is Missing $ inserted.

Required packages

Some symbols require you to use extra packages—if you hover on the symbol, the tooltip will tell you which package you need:

Symbol Palette advising need of a $\LaTeX$ package

For example, in this case, to use the \iint symbol you need to make sure you have \usepackage{amsmath} in your document preamble, i.e., before the \begin{document} statement.