[Tex/LaTex] the correct way to do delimiters

bracketsmath-mode

I've always used \left and \right with my delimiters, but Martin Heller's answer to another question indicates that this method gives incorrect spacing. The correction appears to be prepending \mathopen{}. Is this the canonical "correct" method? And what exactly does the \mathopen command do? A quick Google search does not turn up much useful information on it.

The other alternative offered involved the \biggl and \biggr commands and their ilk. I've never quite felt comfortable with using these because it doesn't feel right to specify these sizes manually. Is there a reason to prefer these commands to \left and \right?

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This question addresses the spacing problems with \left and \right and the relationship with \mathopen and \mathclose.

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[Tex/LaTex] the “correct” way of embedding text into math mode

Another option is to use the \text{} command provided by the amsmath package.

Having said that, I doubt that it's possible to have a single format that is "correct" for all possible requirements of leading and trailing spaces. For instance, I think you'll find that your example looks better without the space before "number" but with the space after "Let."

If there's some reason that you really want to not have the space inside whatever text environment you choose, you can force a space in math mode using a single backslash followed by a space (i.e. \<space>). For example,

\[ \text{Let}\ x=\text{number of cats}. \]

[Tex/LaTex] the correct way to typeset higher order time derivatives in LaTeX

There's probably no single or unique "correct" way to typeset this expression, but

using \scriptscriptstyle for the overset terms (4) and (n+1),
using \mathclap to "smash" the width of the term (n+1), and
inserting a thinspace, \,, in front of the dt terms

may be what you need:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{mathtools} % for \mathclap macro
\begin{document}
\[
 \dot{V}_t = \dot{V}_{t-1} + 
 \ddot{V}_{t-1} \,dt + 
 \frac{\dddot{V}_{t-1}\,dt^2}{2} +
 \frac{\overset{\scriptscriptstyle(4)}{V}_{t-1}\,dt^3}{6} + \dots + 
 \frac{\overset{\mathclap{\scriptscriptstyle(n+1)}}{V}_{t-1}\,dt^n}{n!}
\]
\end{document}

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[Tex/LaTex] the “correct” way of embedding text into math mode

[Tex/LaTex] the correct way to typeset higher order time derivatives in LaTeX

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