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I know that we can type calligraphy words like $\mathcal{L}$. However, the function works only for capital characters, not for the lowercase characters. Could anyone knows how to set? Also, the bold face of the lowercase callipraphic letters is also needed.

P.S. The reason that I want to use the calligraphic lowercase letters is because the one of my textbook has used it so that I have to follow it for my work.

Thank you very much!

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  • 5
    see Lowercase \mathcal
    – barbara beeton
    Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 14:00
  • Is the euler math font of interest? \documentclass{article} \usepackage{eulervm} \begin{document} $abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz$ \end{document}
    – Steven B. Segletes
    Commented Mar 4, 2015 at 15:47

2 Answers 2

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39

Three fonts have lowercase calligraphic letters and a bold version, and a LaTeX package to use them:

  • bickham adapted for LaTeX from Adobe's Bickham Script Pro opentype font,
  • boondox (with a variant boondox-o) (adapted from the BOONDOXCalligraphic STIX font),
  • dutchcal adapted from ESSTIX math calligraphic font.

In addition the mathabx package has a mathc calligraphic font (in version normal only), but I couldn't make it work.

Here a demo:

        \documentclass[12pt]{article}
        \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

        %\usepackage{bickham}
        \usepackage{boondox-cal}
        %\usepackage{boondox-calo}
       % \usepackage{dutchcal}

        \pagestyle{empty}

        \begin{document}%
        \textbf{%
        % Bickham
        Boondox :
        % Boondox-o
        % Dutchcal
        }%

        \[ \begin{array}[t]{c@{\quad}c}
            \verb+ \mathcal + & \verb+ \mathbcal + \\[6pt]
            \mathcal{Em} & \mathbcal{Ln}
            \end{array} \]%

        \end{document}

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  • 3
    @Bernard I like BOONDOX-cal for lower case mathcal, but prefer the original mathcal for upper case. I tried this as a way to ``save'' the original mathcal before calling BOONDOX: \def\mathcalORIG#1{\mathcal{#1}}\usepackage{BOONDOX-cal} but it didn't work. \mathcalORIG{F} returned BOODNOX's F and not the default version. Is there a way to accomplish what I want, i.e., lower case BOONDOX mathcal and upper case default mathcal. Thanks!
    – Leo Simon
    Commented Sep 9, 2017 at 2:41
  • Only dutchcal seems to be available on my linux box with debian packages texlive-full and texlive-math-extra installed. It makes sense that I don't have bickham, since presumably that's proprietary to Adobe.
    – user6853
    Commented Nov 26, 2017 at 21:30
  • boondox is also in TeX Live. Perhaps you should update. As to bickham I had to download the font itself for free, and install it in my texmf-local. There's an opentype version. The necessary files for use in LaTeX are not part of TeX Live, but you can download them from CTAN ready-to-install in your texmf-local root
    – Bernard
    Commented Nov 26, 2017 at 21:45
  • 1
    If boondox-cal[o] doesn't work try BOONDOX-cal[o]
    – Oskar Limka
    Commented Sep 21, 2021 at 13:28
31

If it is only about the calligraphic l (which you mentioned in the question), then you can use \ell. This is often used to avoid confusion between the letter l and the number 1. Remember that you have to use \boldsymbol{} to print (well..) bold symbols instead of \mathbf{}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
    $1 \mathbf{1}  \quad  l \mathbf{l}  \quad  \ell \boldsymbol{\ell}$
\end{document}

ell

If it is more general and not only about l, then see the question linked by @barbara beeton

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  • 2
    is there a similar work around for the letter 'r'?
    – Michael Levy
    Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 2:12

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