Centigrade/Kelvin symbol in LaTeX

[compilerbitch]

Does anyone here happen to know how to set a centigrade/kelvin symbol in LaTeX (raised small circle). I could hack about with math symbols to do it, but most fonts have proper glyphs for this and I'd prefer to use the real thing. Any clues? I've drawn a blank with my usual sources.

(crossposted to my own journal and other likely places on LJ)

Comments

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that it's ^\circ, in maths mode.

But I don't have LaTeX here to check, and it's a long time since I used it in anger, anyway.

[fluffymark]

That's the one. At least, that's the one i used in my thesis whenever I needed a degree symbol. Don't know if there's a better one.

[keris.livejournal.com]

I used the same thing :)

[fluffymark]

Write everything in Kelvin. You don't need the little circle then. ;)

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

I'm using both, for the benefit of non physicsy types. Thanks, by the way, I'll use your hack.

(ps: any chance of sanity checking the crap astrophysics in my thesis introduction chapter?)

[fluffymark]

Sure, drop it to me in an email and I'll have a look at it.

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

http://findatlantis.com/sjtthesis.pdf

(It's a bit big to email now)

Thanks! I will be happy to reward you with nice dinner for this!

(Relevant stuff is in Chapter 2, at least what there is of it so far)

[fluffymark]

All looks fine to me, except possibly one thing. What do you mean by a "black body facing away from the sun", exactly?

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

That bit came from some fairly obscure digging I did to figure out what temperatures satellites actually are subjected to. The idea is that if you have a perfectly black (fully absorbing regardless of wavelength) thingummy with line of sight to the sun, it will reach (what was it? 7C or something?), but in shadow, it would get extremely cold. I probably need to rephrase that section.

[yannnis.livejournal.com]

There's a few ways to write the symbol for degrees:

1. Superscripted circle
You can have ^\circ in math mode to have a circle in superscript, or just write "The human body temperature is 37$^\circ$ Celsius if you want degrees in your text.

You can also define a command that writes a degree symbol when used with \degree if you add the following to your preamble

\newcommand{\degree}{\ensuremath{^\circ}}

Since the command ensures that the superscripted circle is written in math mode, you can use this command both in math mode and in text mode.

2. Use the package textcomp
..which defines a huge number of symbols. Examples are: \textdegree, \textcelsius, \textcopyright and \texteuro.
Please note that the generated euro symbol is "uglier" than the one defined in the Adobe fonts. To obtain Adobe's euro symbol, load the package europs and use the \EURofc{} or \EUR{} command.

3. Import Windows character map symbols
It is also possible to use the Windows character map to copy and paste symbols like €, é, ä, ò, © etc... But in this case you have to specify the input encoding using the package inputenc. The input encoding depends on the computer/operating system that was used to create the tex file:

Macs: \usepackage[applemac]{inputenc}
Unix Latin1: \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
Windows ANSI: \usepackage[ansinew]{inputenc}


Hope this helps..

[kht.livejournal.com]

I've always used $^o$, but you learn something new every day!

[bjh21.livejournal.com]

latin1.def does this to implement the ISO 8859-1 DEGREE SIGN:

\ProvideTextCommandDefault{\textdegree}{\ensuremath{{^\circ}}}
\DeclareInputText{176}{\textdegree}

The standard "T1" font encoding doesn't include \textdegree, though some other font encodings do. A consequence of this is that if you want to use \textdegree, you either need to either use an input encoding that has it or put that \ProvideTextCommandDefault in your prologue. This also means that you won't get a "real" degree sign glyph unless you use a different font encoding.

[bjh21.livejournal.com]

Actually, yannnis' suggestion of textcomp is probably the best way to get \textdegree to work in general, since it switches to the TS1 encoding to get a real degree sign glyph if your normal font encoding doesn't have it.

[trurl.livejournal.com]

This is a good question -- I was actually having the same problem the other day. I settled on what it looks like everyone else has suggested, basically $^\circ$.

[andrewwyld.livejournal.com]

You don't need a degree sign for Kelvin.

[owdbetts.livejournal.com]

Modern practice is, as I understand it, not to use the degree symbol for either Kelvin or Celsius, but just to write them like any other unit...

Maybe you might want it if you have some reason to use degrees Fahrenheit, but apart from that I think it's best to just omit it...

-roy