Valid reasons not to use old TeX commands in LaTeX2ε

Question

Are there reasons not to use the old commands of TeX, like \rm, \em, \sl, etc. in LaTeX?

Yet they still work when I use them.

Would you say that not being able to combine \it and \bf to create *bold-italic text* is a valid reason for not using the "old" font commands? — Mico, Dec 13 '23 at 20:11

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 13 '23 at 20:20

6

By default they are not defined.

Some classes define them for compatibility with documents from the 1980s but why would you want that? In other classes you would simply get an undefined command error.

The commands are, in most cases, less intuitive than the standard commands as they do not combine. \it\bf is upright bold, not bold italic.

Note this applies to \rm, \sf, \bf, \it. Not to \em which is a standard latex command.

answered Dec 13 '23 at 20:20

David Carlisle

757,742

I thank you with all my heart. – Sebastiano Dec 13 '23 at 20:22

Valid reasons not to use old TeX commands in LaTeX2ε

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