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I wander if Greek letters can be normal - non-italic. Variants such as

The length is 10 \mu$\text{m}$.

or

The length is 10 $\text{\mu m}$.

are not accepted.

Only

The length is 10 $\mu \text{m}$.

is accepted which produces the output

enter image description here

To me there is a disaccord between the the italic Greek mu and the normal Latin m.

Community
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Viesturs
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    My answer here, https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/145926/upright-greek-font-fitting-to-computer-modern/230220#230220, could be of use if you use pdflatex. – Steven B. Segletes Aug 02 '17 at 02:38
  • When you are interested specifically in the micro-prefix and not a full Greek alphabet, there is \textmu (from the package textcomp) and \tcmu (from the package mathcomp, works in math mode). – Sir Cornflakes Aug 03 '17 at 16:17

2 Answers2

5

For this specific case, use siunitx: first it is not a ‘normal’ μ which is used, and – icing on the cake, you'll have a correct unbreakable thin space between the number and the unit:

\documentclass{article
\usepackage{siunitx} 

\begin{document}

The length is \SI{10}{\um}

\end{document}

enter image description here

It you're interested in having upright Greek letters in general, you can either use the upgreek package, or one of the fonts that allow them in math mode, among which fourier, kpfonts, mathdesign (non exhaustive list).

Bernard
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  • How to properly use siunitx with complex units of measurement e.g. 5 N/mm^2? – Viesturs Aug 02 '17 at 14:03
  • Using the abbreviations: \SI[per-mode=symbol]{5}{\N\per\square\mm} or \SI[per-mode=symbol]{5}{\N\per\mm\squared} . The list of abbreviations is in table 21, pp. 34-36 of thee documentation, and you can define your own abbreviations. – Bernard Aug 02 '17 at 14:20
2

With an up to date LaTeX installation,the UTF-8 encoding and the "textcomp" package are used by default. This makes the input of the MICRO SIGN simple:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
The length is 10\,µm.
The length is 10\,\textmu m.
\end{document}

Mind, that the µ in the example is the Unicode character 00B5 MICRO SIGN.

For the similar looking character 'μ' (03BC GREEK SMALL LETTER MU) as well as for all other Greek letters, Unicode input is supported "everywhere" by loading the package textalpha (see its documentation for limitations) or in text parts marked as greek by loading Babel with, e.g., \usepackage[greek,english]{babel}.

G. Milde
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