Help:LaTeX Symbol Tables - Body-Text Symbols

LaTeX reserved ASCII characters
Some ASCII characters are interpreted as special command names or arguments causing them not appearing in the output or returning  "Failed to parse (syntax error / lexing error)"  error outputs. For displaying them as symbols (escaping LaTeX command names or arguments), correct syntax is adding a backslash (\) in front of character.

Subscripts & Superscripts
To get an expression exp to appear as a subscript, you just type _{exp}. To get exp to appear as a superscript, you type ^{exp}. LaTeX handles superscripted superscripts and all of that stuff in the natural way. It even does the right thing when something has both a subscript and a superscript.

Spacing and Forced PNG rendering
LaTeX markup ignores the spaces you type and puts in the spacing that it thinks is best.

Example 3:

To force the formula to render as PNG, add \, (thin space) at the end of the formula (where it is not rendered). This will force PNG if the user is in "HTML if simple" mode, but not for "HTML if possible" mode (math rendering settings in preferences). See your preferences tab.

You can also use \,\! (thin space and negative space, which cancel out) anywhere inside the math tags. This does force PNG even in "HTML if possible" mode, unlike \,. See your preferences tab. Example 5:

For rendering the square root of five, do this (in editing mode):

Example 6:
 * 1) Click on button [[Image:button_math.png]]
 * 2) Text  $$Insert formula here$$  will be added to your edition
 * 3) Substitute "Insert formula here" by TeX code:   $$\sqrt{5}\,\!$$ 
 * 4)  symbol $$\sqrt{5}\,\!$$ will be rendered in your text.


 * Typing  $$a^{c+2}$$  you may get (depending on your preferences): $$a^{c+2}$$
 * But typing  $$a^{c+2}\,\!$$  you will get $$a^{c+2}\,\!$$

Table 1: Escapable "Special" Characters
* The underscore package redefines \_" to produce an underscore in text mode (i.e., it makes it unnecessary to escape the underscore character).

Table 3: Commands Defined to Work in Both Math and Text Mode
Where two symbols are present, the left one is the "\faked" symbol that provides by default, and the right one is the \true" symbol that textcomp makes available.