Picture:
Question is by far simple, how do I print the sigma greek letter?. Situation is that I want to print it as my teacher write it. As shown in the picture. I already tried Detexify with no success by the way.
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I don't recognise the image as a sigma. Unicode has three variant lowercase sigmas
U+03c2 GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA
U+03c3 GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA
U+03f2 GREEK LUNATE SIGMA SYMBOL
which look like
ςσϲ
or as an image
If you are convinced you want the letter shape you drew just save it as a png or (better if you can) a scalable format such as pdf, then you can do
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx,amsmath}
\newcommand\bentpaperclip{\includegraphics[height=1ex]{bentpaperclip.png}}
\begin{document}
\[\sigma \neq \varsigma \neq \bentpaperclip\]
\end{document}
David Carlisle
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@ David Carlisle: For me it's a small (non-final)
σ, with some awkwardness due to the fact it's not that easy to make a drawing with a mouse – Bernard Oct 21 '14 at 00:07 -
@Bernard I was going to suggest a guess but decided to leave it to the OP:-)the non final form is a possibility but as drawn it's an open curve so topologically equivalent to the other two and not to the one you suggest so (since I was once a topologist) I wasn't prepared to rule out the other possibilities:-) – David Carlisle Oct 21 '14 at 00:14
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@Bernard No actually I am pretty sure of what I draw (was'nt using a mouse). And none of them is the symbol. – Hans Oct 21 '14 at 00:17
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@DavidCarlisle thank you for answering, by the way but I am pretty sure none of those symbols is. And thanks for the edit (As I said before I was on a phone and it's not easy to post a question from there). – Hans Oct 21 '14 at 00:18
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@Hans If it isn't one of those symbols then are you sure it's a sigma? (unicode has pretty good coverage of classical and modern European scripts and of math notation, so if Unicode doesn't think it's a sigma then I'd be inclined to believe it...) – David Carlisle Oct 21 '14 at 00:22
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@DavidCarlisle I want to be completely honest with you, I don't know much about this subject, but I already made my research (on wikipedia and google) and I didn't find the sigma symbol as the shown in the greek letters history. My teacher keeps stating that is the sigma symbol and actually he makes another symbol (can't remember the name but it was a greek one to) that is exactly the same but backwards (horizontally only). – Hans Oct 21 '14 at 00:27
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3@Hans Teachers can be wrong:-) But anyway I updated the answer with something you could use. – David Carlisle Oct 21 '14 at 00:35
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@DavidCarlisle Thank you for your patience and your answer, I was actually looking forward for something a lil bit more professional. I mean you can see the difference from a mile. – Hans Oct 21 '14 at 00:37
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@Hans a professional publication would use a real sigma, what else can I say? – David Carlisle Oct 21 '14 at 00:41
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@DavidCarlisle Is not about saying anything, you know?, thank you so much anyway. – Hans Oct 21 '14 at 00:43
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@Hans the image above is literally a cropped version of your image, you could produce something more closely matching your fonts if you spent a bit of time in any drawing program, the point of the edit was to show the possibility of using the symbol from an image (since it doesn't appear to be one you will find in a font) – David Carlisle Oct 21 '14 at 00:44
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1@DavidCarlisle Yeah, yeah I know but it would be fantastic what Manuel typed in the comments, a version made in tikz is just that I don't know how to. And I actually needed like $\bentpaperclip_x$ (thanks for the name for the letter by the way I think it fits as hell). – Hans Oct 21 '14 at 00:46
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1@Hans I am greek and David Carlisle is right. The first symbol σ is the sigma that goes inside of the words. The second one ς is the sigma that goes at the end of the words. The sigma that you draw it is my belief that is the first one and not something different because there is not such a letter in the greek alphabet. Your teacher I believe was just in a hurry so that is why it isn't very similar to the ones seen in this answer. Hope that helped! – Adam Oct 21 '14 at 02:07
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@Hans --- if your teacher uses Microsoft Word, will you do that as well? – Ian Thompson Oct 23 '14 at 18:34
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After thinking a lot about the situation I found that the best solution wasn't actually import a png version of the character. And also I found that it could be good to have a way to change the character properties.
Best way to solve the question is create the character using Tikz:
\newcommand{\UNALsigma}[1]{%
\scalebox{#1}{
\begin{tikzpicture}%
\draw[thick, fill] (0.7,-0.3)--(0.8,-0.3)--(0.3,-1)--(0,0)--(1,-0.1)--(1,-0.2)--(0.95,-0.1)--(0.1,-0.1)--(0.3,-0.9)--(0.8,-0.3);%
%
\end{tikzpicture}%
}}
\newcommand{\UNALsigmarc}[1]{%
\scalebox{#1}{
\begin{tikzpicture}%
\draw [thick, fill] plot [smooth, tension=0.2] coordinates { (0.7,-0.3) (0.8,-0.3) (0.3,-1) (0,0) (1,-0.1) (1,-0.2) (0.95,-0.1) (0.1,-0.1) (0.3,-0.9) (0.8,-0.3)};
%
\end{tikzpicture}%
}}
In that way when "typing" in the character \UNALsigma{0.4} or \UNALsigmarc, between the brackets the character can be scaled. Also \UNALsigmarc is a "rounded-corners" version of the character.
The output is the following:
Also the character is usable in mathmode:
\begin{align*}
\UNALsigmarc{0.35}=\frac{P}{A}
\end{align*}
Obtaining:
Also roundness is customizable by changing the smooth tension in the plot of the character.
Hans
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If you're really going to go this route, at least use some font-relative unit like
exoreminstead ofcmwhich has absolutely no hope of scaling automatically with the font size. – Paul Gessler Feb 08 '15 at 18:11 -
@egreg Thank you so much for participating with such a useful comment. By the way I actually persisted creating the symbol because I realize all the mechanics and mechatronics department in my university DO use the symbol. – Hans Feb 09 '15 at 19:48
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@Manuel Yeah is sort of similar, thanks for the comment (it isn't nabla if that is maybe what you meant, is sigma character for stress). – Hans Feb 09 '15 at 19:50
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@PaulGessler Thank you so much for the advice, I actually tried but it gets kind of distorted when changing the size. Actually I didn't tried with the scalebox. Thank you so much, I'll try it and probably post it in a later time. – Hans Feb 09 '15 at 19:52
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@Hans Find a paper written by those who use the symbol and see what they use in LaTeX. – Manuel Feb 09 '15 at 19:52
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@Manuel Probably the regular
\sigmasymbol (not probably, that's almost for sure, but differ of what is handwritten), as this one wasn't available (now it is available). – Hans Feb 09 '15 at 19:54
\sigma? – percusse Oct 20 '14 at 22:43$\sigma$or$\varsigma$? – Aradnix Oct 20 '14 at 22:45\sumthat has proper spacing. If you're using sigma for something else, there's\Sigma \sigma \varsigma. If you're writing greek texts, there's all sorts of unicode support. Be more specific. – Sean Allred Oct 20 '14 at 22:46