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The command for using the lato light font is given to be

\fontseries{l}\selectfont

but this command produces no change to my document when compiled with pdflatex.

I would like to use the light version of Lato as the default font for my entire document. How can I achieve this?

Thanks!

calben
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  • 2
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2 Answers2

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As you say you're compiling with pdflatex, I assume you're using the lato package, so you can just set the default weight \mddefault to light:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[default]{lato}

\usepackage{lipsum}% for dummy text

\renewcommand{\mddefault}{l}% switch default weight to light

\begin{document}

\section{Title}

\lipsum

\end{document}
Philippe Goutet
  • 28,978
  • How can you add math support though? It seems that adding \usepackage{mathastext} after \renewcommand{\mddefault}{l} does not give the desired result. – uknown Oct 19 '20 at 14:02
  • @uknown: if I add \usepackage{mathastext} after \renewcommand{\mddefault}{l} in my answer's code snippet, I get what I expect. What's the problem you have with the result ? – Philippe Goutet Oct 20 '20 at 13:47
  • The problem is that by doing so, not all the math characters are in light mode e.g. numbers remain default while greek letters are light, etc. – uknown Oct 21 '20 at 14:05
  • @uknown: works perfectly for me (all glyphs from lato are light). Perhaps a version problem? Is your distribution up to date? You should ask a new question to get help on where the problem comes from. – Philippe Goutet Oct 22 '20 at 07:17
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On the other hand, if you have Lato.ttf or Lato.otf installed and want to use them, here is a way. Use xelatex or lualatex for compiling the following code.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX]{Lato Light}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}
\Blinddocument
\end{document}

enter image description here

If you don't have Lato installed, download a free version from fontsquirrel and install.