Weird tau greek letter

Question

I have a Physics book in which the work done by a force is represented by the greek letter tau.

Thing is, it's a different form of tau, a form I've never seen before. Here is what it looks like:

(sorry about the low quality pic)

The greek tau found in LaTeX's default greek alphabet looks quite different. Is there any command in which I would generate such above form of tau?

(there's no mention of it in "The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List", and I have already tried "Detexify" soft (which didn't give a good solution), only solutions given by the "duplicate" in discussion)

Possible duplicate of How to look up a symbol or identify a math symbol or character? — Henri Menke, Jul 18 '17 at 02:07
I've already tried using Detexify software. And the book says it's a Tau. — Italo Marinho, Jul 18 '17 at 02:44
@HenriMenke However, I think this question should not be closed. Detextify doesn't give an acceptable solution and searching in The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List I have found only the symbol of my answer, which is not the best. — CarLaTeX, Jul 18 '17 at 08:10
@CarLaTeX Asking for a symbol/font is actually off-topic here. There is https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com for such questions. We just close it as duplicate because we cannot migrate there. — Henri Menke, Jul 18 '17 at 08:18
@egreg It's a Brazilian physics book: "Ferraro, Nicolau Gilberto; Ramalho Junior, Francisco; Soares, Paulo Toledo. Os Fundamentos da Física - Vol. 1" — Italo Marinho, Jul 18 '17 at 15:28
Here's an extract from the book's page with the symbol: http://tinyurl.com/weirdtau — Italo Marinho, Jul 18 '17 at 15:34
@ItaloMarinho My impression is that they chose a weird symbol among the ones available. I'd simply go with \tau if that's the usual name for the object. — egreg, Jul 18 '17 at 15:38
Yeah, I guess I'll have to. It's because as a teacher, I've always used this weird tau symbol; it looks clearer for the students, in my opinion. So that's why I wanted to migrate this into my publishings. But thanks again! — Italo Marinho, Jul 18 '17 at 15:43

CarLaTeX · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-18T04:05:54.343

4

\textturntwo from tipx packages looks similar to it, in my opinion:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tipx}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
\textturntwo

$\text{\textturntwo}$
\end{document}

edited Jul 18 '17 at 04:05

answered Jul 18 '17 at 03:43

CarLaTeX

62,716

3

That is just the number 2 rotated by 180°. – Henri Menke Jul 18 '17 at 04:54
1

But it really looks very similar to the provided picture in the question :) – Dr. Manuel Kuehner Jul 18 '17 at 06:00
4

@HenriMenke Probably that's the reason why they call it "turn two" :):):) – CarLaTeX Jul 18 '17 at 06:12
@CarLaTeX Just sayin', because it is certainly not Greek. – Henri Menke Jul 18 '17 at 07:38
@HenriMenke I haven't found a better ready-to-use symbol :) – CarLaTeX Jul 18 '17 at 07:59
Well, it's the best solution that has been given. It's actually pretty close to the original. Thanks a lot for the alternative! – Italo Marinho Jul 18 '17 at 15:07
1

@ItaloMarinho Thank you for accepting my answer! However, egreg asked you some reference for the book. Maybe, if you give him this info, he could find a better solution :) – CarLaTeX Jul 18 '17 at 15:14
@ItaloMarinho You're welcome! Egreg is a TeX genius, if he can't find a better solution, no one else can :):):) – CarLaTeX Jul 18 '17 at 15:33
That terminal ball makes a big difference IMO -- without it this would look a lot less like a 2 – Chris H Jul 18 '17 at 15:52
This is a great symbol to have for typesetting duodecimal base-12 numbers "ten" (\textturntwo) and "eleven" (\textturnthree). However I've noticed some incompatibility where tipx changes fonts in headings. See this question regarding the exercises package: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/602947/make-exercises-package-compatible-with-kaobook – EthanAlvaree Jun 28 '21 at 15:30
@Mathemanic: just to clarify. tipx doesn't change fonts in headings. The font size issue you saw is because incorrect grouping. The tipa (and hence tipx) packages does redefine \; , \:, \!, \|, and \* for special uses for the phonetic alphabet. I expect this being described in its documentation. – Willie Wong Jun 28 '21 at 16:05
Thank you for the explanation and for fixing the issue @WillieWong! :) – EthanAlvaree Jun 28 '21 at 16:08

Weird tau greek letter

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