Jan 28, 2016 How Do I Type Greek Letters in Microsoft Word eHowTech. Unsubscribe from eHowTech? Greek Letter Shortcuts Mac OS X 10.8 - Duration: 3:22. Nic Miller 35,654 views.
Greek letters often appear as variables in mathematical text. This post describes their support in [La]TeX and Unicode and how their math usage sometimes differs from modern Greek text. For example, the upper-case upsilon looks like a Latin Y in modern Greek, but a curvy Υ in math zones. Similarly, in math zones the two standard Greek letter glyphs φ and ε are variants of ϕ and ϵ, respectively. The Greek math letters appear in Appendix F (p. 434) of The TeXbook along with the TeX control words that define them. The control words can also be used for inputting the characters in other math applications, such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and OneNote (see Appendix B of UnicodeMath).
Several letters have variant glyphs and both the regular and variant characters can occur in the same document with different meanings. In my papers on laser theory, I’ve used θ for the polar angle in spherical coordinates and ϑ for a complex mode coupling coefficient. The following table shows the Greek letters that have variants
| Letter. | Unicode. | TeX. | Variant. | Unicode. | TeX |
| ϵ | 03F5 | epsilon | ε | 03B5 | varepsilon |
| θ | 03B8 | theta | ϑ | 03D1 | vartheta |
| Θ | 0398 | Theta | ϴ | 03F4 | varTheta |
| π | 03C0 | pi | ϖ | 03D6 | varpi |
| ρ | 03C1 | rho | ϱ | 03F1 | varrho |
| σ | 03C3 | sigma | ς | 03C2 | varsigma |
| ϕ | 03D5 | phi | φ | 03C6 | varphi |
ε and φ are standard letters in the modern Greek alphabet, but they are variants in math text as shown in the table. This is the choice made by TeX back in the early 1980s and the math community depends on it. Up to Version 3.0, the Unicode Standard displayed ϕ for 03C6, but in 3.0 it was changed to conform with modern Greek usage as documented in Section 2.3.1 Representative Glyphs for Greek Phi of Unicode Technical Report #25 Unicode Support for Mathematics. Unicode 3.1 added ϵ (03F5).
In The TeXbook Appendix F, the upper-case upsilon Upsilon appears with curvy arms as in the Cambria Math Υ for 03A5. But in the STIX math 2 font, 03A5 appears as an upper-case Latin Y, which isn’t useful for math. Recognizing that fact, Unicode 1.1 encoded 03D2 for the curvy arm glyph ϒ (which unfortunately looks like a Y here; the WordPress blog infrastructure doesn't allow font changes). It has the odd name GREEK UPSILON WITH HOOK SYMBOL. One should not take Unicode names too literally except as being unique identifiers. Until recently, Cambria Math had no glyph at 03D2, but now it’s defined and preferred for math. Admittedly upper-case and lower-case upsilons aren’t commonly used in math, but I anyhow used υ extensively in laser theory to represent complex frequencies such as γ + iω. Here γ is a decay rate and ω is a (real) frequency.
TeX only defines upper-case Greek letters that have glyphs distinct from the Latin alphabet, that is, ΓΔΘΛΞΠΣΥΦΨΩ with the notation Gamma for Γ. Unicode and Office apps support all upper-case Greek letters using the TeX convention that the first letter is upper case as in Alpha for Α (upper-case alpha) and. For math, Greek letters that look identical to Latin letters aren’t useful, since they’d be interpreted as Latin letters. Lower-case Greek letters are italicized by default, while upper-case Greek letters are upright by default. This convention also applies to ∂ (partial—italicized) and ∇ (nabla—not italicized).
[La]TeX has control words to change the math style of math letters, such as mathbf{…}, which changes the letters … to bold face. Ironically that construct doesn’t affect Greek letters, probably an early omission, but now unchangeable for archival reasons. Unicode chose to encode the various math alphabets explicitly instead of using variation selectors. Section 2.2 of Unicode Technical Report #25 describes the mathematical alphabets in the Unicode Standard, which are contained mostly in the plane-1 range U+1D400.U+1D7FF along with some characters in the Letterlike Symbols (U+2100.U+214F). Here is Table 2.1 listing the various math styles
| Math Style | Characters from Basic Set. | Location |
| plain (upright, serifed) | Latin, Greek and digits | BMP |
| bold | Latin, Greek and digits | Plane 1 |
| italic | Latin and Greek | Plane 1* |
| bold italic | Latin and Greek | Plane 1 |
| script (calligraphic) | Latin | Plane 1* |
| bold script (calligraphic). | Latin | Plane 1 |
| Fraktur | Latin | Plane 1* |
| bold Fraktur | Latin | Plane 1 |
| double-struck | Latin and digits | Plane 1* |
| sans-serif | Latin and digits | Plane 1 |
| sans-serif bold | Latin, Greek and digits | Plane 1 |
| sans-serif italic | Latin | Plane 1 |
| sans-serif bold italic | Latin and Greek | Plane 1 |
| monospace | Latin and digits | Plane 1 |
Here the * notes that some characters of the corresponding alphabet are located in the Unicode Letterlike Symbols block.
There’s no sans serif upright Greek alphabet, but LaTeX can display this math style. LaTeX can also display two script variations as described in the post Unicode Math Calligraphic Alphabets, while Unicode only has one. Accordingly, more Unicode math alphabets may be added in the future.
Nemeth braille can represent all the math Greek alphabets and variants as described in the post Nemeth Braille Alphanumerics and Unicode Math Alphanumerics.
So, there are several different ways to do it:
I. The traditional method is to use the ribbonSymbol button (a popular approach for social science, which does not need much mathin the text):
1. On the Insert tab, in the Symbol group, click theSymbol button:
2. On the Symbol dialog box:
II. Using Alt+code shortcuts: this way is the perfect oneif you remember all codes:
In the slide hold Alt and then enter the Unicode code of the symbol.
For example, for the Greek lambda letter, you need to hold Alt and then enter 108.
Note: you can see all the codes in the Symbol dialog box:
III. Using embedded equitation: this way is perfectif you don't need to care about the format and compatibility with previous versions of MicrosoftOffice (a popular approach for physical science and mathematics, which do need a lot of math inthe text):
1. In the slide where you want to insert the symbol, clickAlt+= to insert the equitation block:
2. In the equitation block without any additional efforts, you canenter any letter that you need just by typing +Name of the letter:
| alpha | kappa | varrho |
| beta | lambda | sigma |
| chi | mu | varsigma |
| delta | nu | tau |
| epsilon | o | upsilon |
| varepsilon | pi | omega |
| phi | varpi | xi |
| varphi | theta | psi |
| gamma | vartheta | zeta |
| eta | iota | rho |
To insert a capital letter of the Greek alphabet, simply enter +Name of the letter startingwith a capital letter:
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| Delta | Phi | Gamma |
| Lambda | Mu | Pi |
| Theta | Sigma | Upsilon |
| Omega | Hi | Psi |
How to insert other symbols and templates in an equation, see Howto insert the mathematical and other symbols into the PowerPoint slide.
3. After entering the letter name, click the space,the sequence will be replaced by the corresponding symbol.
4. Click Alt+= again to exit from the equitation.
Now you can continue entering you text.
Note: In the Autocorrect Options you will find all ofName of the symbol sequences that you can use. To open the options dialog,do the following:
1. On the File menu, click the Options button:
2. In the PowerPoint Options dialog box, on theProofing tab, click the AutoCorrect Options… button:
3. In the AutoCorrect dialog box, choose the MathAutoCorrect tab:
The Math AutoCorrect tab shows all Names of symbol that can be used forinserting the Greek letters and other mathematical symbols.
Note: AutoCorrect options work through all Microsoft Office products on this PC, laptop, etc. Ifyou change some of them in PowerPoint, you will see all changes also in Word, Outlook, and Excel.
See also this tip in French:Comment insérer des symboles grecs très rapidement.