LaTeX Special Characters

Back in the late 1990s, I was writing a lot of documents in LaTeX. I was spending enough time doing so that I decided to add a list of escape sequences for LaTeX special characters to my homepage, since I was looking those up so often that it seemed like an easy way to have access to them.

On a subsequent redesign of my home page, I ditched the LaTeX special characters. Within days I received a complaint from a friend who relied on my webpage as a reference for escaping special characters in LaTeX. So I put them back.

I haven't worked with LaTeX in quite some time, and I'm not sure anyone still uses my site as a reference. But I'll be damned if I disappoint anyone a second time.

Character Purpose Input for literal output \ Special symbols and instructions $\backslash$ { Open group $\{$ } Close group $\}$ % Comments \% & Tabs and table alignments \& ~ Unbreakable space \~{} $ Starting or ending math text \$ ^ Math superscripts \^{} _ Math subscripts \_{} # Defining replacements symbols \# < $<$ > $>$