5

I would like to use both \star and \ast in my document, but they produce the same character (*), whether or not \star is in math mode. I am using pdflatex in MikTeX 2.9 with the times package. What package do I need to get the \star character?

Torbjørn T.
  • 206,688
Mary
  • 51
  • 1
  • 1
  • 2
  • Possible duplicate of http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/82155/star-vs-ast-in-formulas-which-one-to-use . Or at least you'll find some answers there... – long tom Aug 27 '13 at 11:15
  • Welcome to TeX.SX! You can have a look on our our starter page to familiarize yourself further with our format. A tip: If you indent lines by 4 spaces, then they're marked as a code sample. You can also highlight the code and click the "code" button ({}) or hit Ctrl+K. – Claudio Fiandrino Aug 27 '13 at 11:48
  • @longtom -- this symbol is identified in the comprehensive symbols list as being a "basic" symbol, so a user should expect it to be present. since it is not present with the times package, what is needed is the mechanism for actually accessing it, and that isn't provided by the linked question. – barbara beeton Aug 27 '13 at 12:35
  • I get two different symbols from \documentclass{article}\usepackage{times}\begin{document}$\star\ast$\end{document}. Can you show a minimal example? – egreg Aug 27 '13 at 15:12

1 Answers1

4

Computer modern has a star symbol. Since it is a rather stylistic symbol let's use it:

\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage{times}
\begin{document}    
    \newcommand{\mystar}{{\fontfamily{lmr}\selectfont$\star$}}

    Foo\mystar bar*
\end{document}

enter image description here

jonalv
  • 11,466
  • 2
    Or, much more efficiently, \renewcommand{\star}{{\usefont{OML}{cmm}{m}{it}\symbol{63}}} – egreg Aug 27 '13 at 15:07