Named Characters
Mathematica provides systemwide support for a large number of special characters. Each character has a name and a number of shortcut aliases. They are fully supported by the standard
Mathematica fonts.
Interpretation of Characters
The interpretations given here are those used in
StandardForm and
InputForm. Most of the interpretations also work in
TraditionalForm.
You can override the interpretations by giving your own rules for
MakeExpression.
| Letters and letter-like forms | used in symbol names |
| Infix operators | e.g. x y |
| Prefix operators | e.g. ¬x |
| Postfix operators | e.g. x! |
| Matchfix operators | e.g.  x |
| Compound operators | e.g.  f x |
| Raw operators | operator characters that can be typed on an ordinary keyboard |
| Spacing characters | interpreted in the same way as an ordinary space |
| Structural elements | characters used to specify structure; usually ignored in interpretation |
| Uninterpretable elements | characters indicating missing information |
Types of characters.
The precedences of operators are given in "
Operator Input Forms".
Infix operators for which no grouping is specified in the listing are interpreted so that for example
xyz becomes
CirclePlus[x, y, z].
Naming Conventions
Characters that correspond to built-in
Mathematica functions typically have names corresponding to those functions. Other characters typically have names that are as generic as possible.
Characters with different names almost always look at least slightly different.
| \[Capital...] | uppercase form of a letter |
| \[Left...] and \[Right...] | pieces of a matchfix operator (also arrows) |
| \[Raw...] | a printable ASCII character |
| \[...Indicator] | a visual representation of a keyboard character |
Some special classes of characters.
| style | Script, Gothic, etc. |
| variation | Curly, Gray, etc. |
| case | Capital, etc. |
| modifiers | Not, Double, Nested, etc. |
| direction | Left, Up, UpperRight, etc. |
| base | A, Epsilon, Plus, etc. |
| diacritical mark | Acute, Ring, etc. |
Typical ordering of elements in character names.
Aliases
Mathematica supports both its own system of aliases, as well as aliases based on character names in TeX and SGML or HTML. Except where they conflict, character names corresponding to plain TeX, LaTeX and AMSTeX are all supported. Note that TeX and SGML or HTML aliases are not given explicitly in the list of characters below.
| Esc xxx Esc | ordinary Mathematica alias |
| Esc \xxx Esc | TeX alias |
| Esc &xxx Esc | SGML or HTML alias |
Types of aliases.
The following general conventions are used for all aliases:
- Characters that are alternatives to standard keyboard operators use these operators as their aliases (e.g. Esc -> Esc for →, Esc && Esc for
).
- Most single-letter aliases stand for Greek letters.
- Capital-letter characters have aliases beginning with capital letters.
- When there is ambiguity in the assignment of aliases, a space is inserted at the beginning of the alias for the less common character (e.g. Esc -> Esc for \[Rule] and Esc
-> Esc for \[RightArrow]).
- ! is inserted at the beginning of the alias for a Not character.
- TeX aliases begin with a backslash \.
- SGML aliases begin with an ampersand &.
- User-defined aliases conventionally begin with a dot or comma.
Font Matching
The special fonts provided with
Mathematica include all the characters given in this listing. Some of these characters also appear in certain ordinary text fonts.
When rendering text in a particular font, the
Mathematica notebook front end will use all the characters available in that font. It will use the special
Mathematica fonts only for other characters.
A choice is made between Times-like, Helvetica-like (sans serif) and Courier-like (monospaced) variants to achieve the best matching with the ordinary text font in use.
