MathType User Manual

The MathType Window

The picture below shows MathType with all parts of its toolbar visible:

Symbol palettes
Template palettes
Handle

Small bar
Tabs
Large tabbed bar Palette

Small tabbed bar

Ruler

Empty slot
Insertion point

Selection

Status bar

Within the equation area itself, there are four items of interest:

Empty Slot
A slot containing no text is displayed with a dotted outline.

Insertion Point
A blinking marker consisting of a horizontal line and a vertical line that indicates
where text or templates will be inserted next.

Selection
The part of the equation that will be affected by any subsequent editing
commands is highlighted.

Status Bar
The Status Bar contains four areas that tell you your current settings for Style,
Size, Zoom, and Color. You can change these settings using menu commands or
simply right-click on an area to show a menu for that setting. While moving the
mouse in the toolbar or in the menus, the four Status Bar entries are temporarily
replaced by a message that describes the item the mouse pointer is over. At other

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 Chapter 3: Basic Concepts

to delete the selection. Pressing the ENTER key will start a new line below the
original line. Immediately after typing, you can choose the Undo Typing
command on the Edit menu to erase everything that you typed since the last
non-typing operation.

Why the Spacebar Doesn’t Work

The SPACE key usually has no effect, since MathType performs spacing of
mathematical equations automatically. Professional-quality mathematical
formatting involves six different space widths, none of which is the same width
as the space character in most fonts, so it would be undesirable to insert the
standard space character into your equations. Many people find this a bit
confusing at first, but you will get used to it quickly. However, sometimes you
might want to insert a non-mathematical phrase into your equations and, here,
the standard space is exactly what you want. To do this, just change the current
style to Text and start typing. See Tutorial 4 in Chapter 4 for details.

Sometimes you may find it necessary to override MathType’s automatic spacing.

There are CTRL (Control) key shortcuts for entering various widths of space; for
instance, CTRL+SPACE inserts a thin space. See Tutorial 6 in Chapter 4 for more
information.

Inserting Symbols
Keyboard Shortcuts To insert a symbol, you click on it in one of the bars, or choose it from one of the
MathType also provides Symbol Palettes, as shown in the picture below. The Symbol Palettes work like
keyboard shortcuts for standard Windows menus — just press or click the left mouse button to display
inserting almost all
symbols on the palettes. the palette’s contents, then choose the desired symbol. The symbol will be
These are shown in the inserted immediately to the right of the insertion point or, if something is
Status Bar when the selected, the symbol will replace it.
mouse is over each
symbol. You can also
assign your own
keyboard shortcut to any
symbol. See Tutorial 16
in Chapter 4 for more
information.

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 Chapter 4: Tutorials

Chapter 4
Tutorials
Before You Start
This chapter contains several tutorial examples of using MathType. We provide
step-by-step instructions for each example, so you should find it easy to work
through them. Each tutorial should take you no more than 10 minutes, and they
are by far the best way to learn MathType. Before you start, however, there are a
few things to bear in mind.

First, recall that you can find symbols and templates either in the palettes at the
very top of the MathType window, or in the bars lower down. You have to pull
down the palettes to find the items you need, but you can just click on the ones
in the bars. For the most part, the tutorials will require very common symbols
and templates that we placed in the bars for you before we shipped MathType.
You can change the contents of these bars at any time; we explain how in
Tutorial 5.

Undo and Redo Also, you do not have to worry about making mistakes. If you type something
You can also correct wrong, or choose the wrong symbol from one of the palettes, you can correct
mistakes by using the your mistake by pressing the BACKSPACE key.
Undo command on
MathType’s Edit menu.
In MathType 5 you can Fonts and the Appearance of Your Equations
Undo and Redo an The tutorials will often tell you that “your equation should now look like this.”
unlimited number of
In fact, the appearance of your equation will be determined by the fonts you are
times.
using, so you shouldn’t take this statement too literally. MathType’s default fonts
are Times New Roman, Symbol and MT Extra. These fonts will probably be
acceptable, at least for the purposes of working through the tutorial, and we
recommend that you stick with them until you’ve gained some experience
working with MathType.

For the time being, please do not change fonts by using the Other command on
the Style menu — as you’ll see in Tutorial 8, there’s a much better way of doing
this in MathType, and we don’t want you to get into any bad habits.

Some Final Advice

In the first few tutorial examples, we’re going to assume that you’re using
MathType along with Microsoft Word to create a document. MathType works
with a wide variety of word processing, publishing, Web editing and graphics
programs, but Word is by far its most common companion. If you want to work
through the tutorials using some other word processing application, it should be
easy to adapt the instructions that follow. Also, detailed instructions for using
MathType with other applications are available in Chapter 5.

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 MathType User Manual

In the tutorials, we’ll often tell you to type certain characters into your equations.
The characters you have to type will be shown in bold type.

Tutorial 1: Fractions and Square Roots

In our first tutorial, we will create the equation

y= 3
16
sin x − c 2 ± µ tan x

This is a very simple equation, but you’ll learn about fractions and square root
templates, and we’ll explore the properties of the insertion point, and illustrate
MathType’s function recognition and automatic spacing capabilities.

To create the equation, just follow the steps listed below. Remember that the
characters you have to type into the equation are shown in bold type.

1. Open a new Word document, and type a few lines of text, just to make the
situation a bit more realistic.

Word Toolbar 2. Now we’re ready to insert a MathType equation. If you installed MathType
You can insert a display correctly, there should be a MathType menu towards the right-hand end of the
equation using the Word menu bar, as shown below.
button on Word’s
MathType toolbar. You
can see what each
toolbar button does by
holding the mouse
pointer over the button
for a couple of seconds.
A tooltip will appear
containing the name of
the button’s command.

From the MathType menu choose the Insert Display Equation command. This
will open a MathType window, ready for you to start creating the equation. If for
some reason neither the MathType menu nor the MathType toolbar is available
in Word, use Word’s Insert Object command (choose Object on the Insert menu),
and choose MathType 5.0 Equation from the list of object types displayed. See
Chapter 5 to learn about other ways to insert an equation, either in Word or
other applications.

3. In the MathType window, type y=. You don’t have to type a space between
the y and the =, because MathType takes care of the spacing automatically. To
help you break the habit of typing spaces, the spacebar is disabled most of the

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 Chapter 4: Tutorials

time in MathType, so pressing it will have no effect (other than producing an

annoying beep!). Chapter 7 discusses where and how you should enter spaces in
MathType, but you won’t have to do this very often.

Also, notice that the y has been made italic, but the = sign has not. Mathematical
variables are almost always printed in italics, so this is the default in MathType.
You can change this by redefining the Variable style using the Define command
on MathType’s Style menu. See Chapter 7 for details.

4. Now we need to enter a square root sign. To do this, click on the icon in
the Small Bar. The template’s home is in the palette, but we’ve also
moved it into the Small Bar to make it easier for you to find. Your equation
should now look like this:

The characters in the equation might be larger than you expect, but this is just a
result of the viewing scale you’re using. You can use the commands on the View
menu to change the viewing scale to anything between 25% and 800%. The
blinking insertion point should be in the slot under the square root sign,
indicating that whatever you enter next will appear there.

Fraction Template 5. Next, we enter a fraction template. To do this, go to the palette and
As you hold the mouse choose the template — it’s the one on the right in the top row. This template
pointer over the palette produces reduced-size fractions, sometimes known as “case” fractions in the
items their name is
displayed in the status typesetting world. Case fractions are generally used to save space when the
bar at the bottom of the numerator and denominator of the fraction are just plain numbers. Be careful not
MathType window. This to choose the larger template — this would create a full-size fraction, which
will help you make sure
you pick the correct
would be too big for this situation. Notice how MathType automatically expands
template. the size of the square root sign to accommodate the fraction. Your equation
should now look like this:

The insertion point should be in the numerator (upper) slot of the fraction
template.

6. To enter the numerator of the fraction, just type 3.

7. Now we need to move the insertion point down into the denominator slot of
the fraction. You can do this by pressing the TAB key or by clicking inside the
denominator slot in your equation.

8. Enter the denominator by typing 16.

9. Next we need to add the sin x outside of the square root sign, and to do this
we have to get the insertion point into the correct position in the hierarchy of
slots that make up the equation. If you repeatedly press the TAB key, you can

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 MathType User Manual

make the insertion point cycle through all the slots in the formula. If you hold
down the SHIFT key while you do this, the insertion point will cycle through the
slots in the reverse direction. Try this out to see how it works. Three of the
positions that the insertion point will assume during the course of this cycling
are shown below. Use a viewing scale of 400% or 800%, so that you can see
what’s happening a little better:

If you use the Show Nesting command on the View menu, you can get an even
better picture of the hierarchical arrangement of slots in your equation:

We have to decide which of these insertion point positions is the right one for
adding the sin x. The position on the left is clearly wrong — we don’t want the
sin x to go in the denominator of the fraction. In the position shown in the center,
the insertion point is in the main slot under the square root sign, so if we type in
sin x the result will be the following formula:

This is not what we want either. The insertion point position shown on the far
right is the correct one; the insertion point is outside the square root, which is
where we want the sin x to go.

Functions 10. Keep pressing the Tab key until the insertion point arrives in the correct
You can customize the position, and then type in the letters sinx. Type slowly, so that you can watch
list of functions that what happens. When you initially type them, the s and the i will be italic,
MathType automatically
recognizes. Tutorial 4 because MathType assumes that they are variables. However, as soon as you
contains an example. type the n, MathType recognizes that sin is an abbreviation for the sine function.
Following standard typesetting rules, MathType uses plain Roman (non-italic)
format for the sin, and inserts a thin space (one sixth of an em) between the sin
and the x.

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 Chapter 4: Tutorials

11. Type –c. Remember you don’t have to type the spaces. You insert the minus
sign by pressing the − (minus/hyphen) key on your keyboard. In a word
processor, pressing this key inserts a hyphen, which is typically shorter than a
minus sign. However, since hyphens are very uncommon in mathematics,
MathType replaces them by minus signs for you (when the Math style is in
effect). Your equation should now look like this:

Keyboard Shortcuts 12. Next we need to attach the superscript (or exponent) to the c. To do this,
You can also create a click on the icon in the Small Bar. This will create a superscript slot next to the
superscript slot by c, as shown below:
typing CTRL+H. CTRL+L
inserts a subscript slot.

13. Type 2, and then press TAB to move the insertion point out of the superscript
slot, into the position shown below:

14. Click on the ± in the Small Bar. MathType knows that the ± symbol is
supposed to have spaces around it in this situation, so, as usual, you don’t have
to type them.

Greek Characters 15. Choose the µ from the palette — it’s the second one from the right in
You can enter a Greek the row of Symbol Palettes. Alternatively, as the Greek letter µ corresponds to
character using CTRL+G the letter m, you can press CTRL+G, followed by m. Your equation should look
and its eqivalent, e.g. m
for µ, P for Π. like this:

16. Finish the formula by typing tanx. Again, notice that MathType uses plain
(instead of italic) type for the tan function and puts thin spaces on either side of
it. Your finished equation should look like this:

Keyboard Shortcut 17. Close the MathType window, either by clicking on its close box or by
The quickest way to choosing the Close and return to <document> command on the File menu, and
close the MathType choose Yes in response to the dialog that asks if you want to save changes. This
window is by pressing
CTRL+F4. will insert your equation into the Word document in “displayed” form (on a line
by itself), like this

y= 3
16 sin x − c 2 ± µ tan x

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 MathType User Manual

18. In other situations, you might want to embed an equation within a line of
text, for example y = 163 sin x − c2 ± µ tan x , rather than displaying it on a line by
itself. To do this, use the Insert Inline Equation command from Word’s
MathType menu or MathType toolbar.

Tutorial 2: Sums, Subscripts & Superscripts

In this tutorial we’ll create the formula that is often used to calculate a statistical
quantity known as variance. The formula is:

1 n 
σ X2 = ∑ X i2 − nX 2 
n  i =1 

This formula illustrates the use of subscripts, superscripts, and summation

templates. Integral and product templates behave much the same as summation
templates, so what you learn in this tutorial will be useful in a variety of other
situations. The steps required to create the formula are as follows:

1. Open a new Word document, and type a few lines of text.

2. Choose the Insert Display Equation command from Word’s MathType menu
or MathType toolbar. This will open a MathType window, ready for you to start
creating the equation.

3. Enter a σ. One way to do this is to choose it from the palette.

Alternatively, you could use its keyboard shortcut. The keyboard shortcuts for
toolbar items are displayed in the status bar as you move the mouse over them.
In this case you can press CTRL+G followed by s.

Zoom Levels 4. Next, create slots for the subscript and superscript on the σ by clicking on
A quick way to change the icon in the Small Bar. Subscripts and superscripts are rather small. In
zoom level is to right- order to better see what’s happening, make sure you’ve chosen at least 200%
click in the Zoom panel
on the status bar. viewing scale in the Zoom submenu of the View menu.
Or, you can type:
CTRL+1 for 100%,
5. The insertion point will be located in the newly created subscript slot. Type
CTRL+2 for 200%, the subscript, X.
CTRL+4 for 400%, or
CTRL+8 for 800%. 6. Move the insertion point up into the superscript slot either by clicking in it
or by pressing the TAB key. Then type the number 2 into the superscript slot.

7. Now let’s move the insertion point to the location shown below:

Either press the TAB key, or click somewhere out to the right of the equation, as
shown in the picture. Be careful not to place the pointer too close to the subscript
or superscript slots, or else the insertion point may jump into one of them when
you click.

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 Chapter 4: Tutorials

8. Type in the = sign. Remember not to type any spaces.

Inserting Fractions 9. Construct the fraction by using the full-size template, which is available
You can also insert the in the Small Bar and in the palette. Be careful — it’s not the same
fraction template by template as the fraction template that we used in Tutorial 1.
pressing CTRL+F.
10. The insertion point will be located in the newly created numerator slot; type
the number 1 into this slot.

11. Move the insertion point down into the denominator slot either by clicking
in it or by pressing the TAB key. Then type in the denominator, n, and press the
TAB key again to move the insertion point out of the denominator slot. Your
equation should now look like this:

12. Next we need to insert a pair of braces (curly brackets). You can do this
either by clicking on the icon in the palette, or by using the CTRL+{ keyboard
shortcut. Remember that { is a shifted character on standard keyboards, so you’ll
actually need to hold down the CTRL and SHIFT keys while pressing the key that
bears the [ and { characters.

13. Click on the icon to enter a summation template inside the braces. Notice
how the braces expand automatically. Your equation should now look like this:

14. Type the letter X into the summand slot (the large slot on the right).
15. Attach a subscript and superscript to the X, using the template. Fill in the
subscript and superscript slots with i and 2, respectively.

Spacing 16. Move the insertion point into the lower limit slot of the summation template
Chapter 7 includes a by clicking inside the slot, and type i=1. As usual, do not type any spaces.
discussion of MathType will automatically reduce the size of the text, and will center it below
MathType’s spacing
rules and how you can the summation sign. In this case, MathType will not insert any spaces around the
customize them. = sign, since it is in the limit of a summation. Again, this is a standard
typesetting convention that you can override if you want to.

17. Click in the upper limit slot of the summation template, and type in the
upper limit, n.

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 MathType User Manual

18. Move the insertion point into the position shown below:

If the insertion point is in the upper limit slot of the summation template,
pressing the TAB key will do the trick. In fact, as we saw in Tutorial 1, if you keep
pressing the TAB key, the insertion point will cycle through all the slots in the
equation and will eventually reach the position shown, regardless of where it
started out. If you want to move the insertion point by clicking, click somewhere
near the point indicated by the arrow in the picture above. You might want to
use the Show Nesting command on the View menu to make this easier.

19. Type –nX.

20. Place a bar over the X by clicking on the icon in the palette. In
MathType, embellishments of this type are always added to the character to the
left of the insertion point. You can even add several embellishments to the same
character. For more details, look for Embellishments in MathType’s online help.

21. Enter the superscript 2 by using the template. It works just the same way
as the template that we used earlier. The equation is now complete (well,
maybe it is — see the next step below).

22. We hope you’re happy with the way MathType formats your equation, but,
if you’re not, we’ve provided a way for you to make some fine adjustments of
your own. You can select any item or group of items, in the usual way, and
nudge them either horizontally or vertically in steps of one pixel (screen dot). If
you view your equation at 800% scale you can make adjustments as small as an
eighth of a point.

To nudge items, use the following keystrokes:

CTRL+← nudges the selected items to the left by one pixel

CTRL+↑ nudges the selected items upward by one pixel
CTRL+→ nudges the selected items to the right by one pixel
CTRL+↓ nudges the selected items downward by one pixel

Selecting an You might want to try moving a subscript or a superscript, moving the limits of
Embellishment the summation, or even moving the bar embellishment.
You can select an
embellishment by Keep in mind, however, that nudging is really intended for making small
holding down the CTRL adjustments that cannot be achieved otherwise. The preferred method for
key and then clicking on
the embellishment.
adjusting spacing is using the Define Spacing dialog, described in Chapter 7.
This approach has the advantage that the spacing rules you define affect all
equations.

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 Chapter 4: Tutorials

23. Close the MathType window, which will insert the equation into your Word
document. Save the document, because we’re going to use it in the next tutorial.

Tutorial 3: Editing Old Equations

This tutorial teaches you some special editing techniques that are useful when
you’re modifying an existing equation. You will often need to correct a mistake
in an old equation, or make a new one that is a slight variation of one that you
have made in the past. Instead of starting from scratch, you can bring a copy of
the old equation back into MathType and modify it as needed. In this way, all
your old documents serve as sources of material for new documents. You can
store commonly used equations (or fragments of equations) in word processing
documents or as expressions within MathType itself.

Let’s suppose that the equation we created in Tutorial 2 is the wrong one, and we
want to use the following related formula in our document instead:

1  n 2 2
sX = ∑ X i − nX 
n − 1  i =1 

The steps required are as follows:

1. Open the Word document containing the equation you created in Tutorial 2
above. We want to bring this equation back into MathType for editing. There are
several ways to do this, as explained in Chapter 5, but the simplest is to double-
click on it. This will open the equation for editing, in a new MathType window.

2. Select the term on the left-hand side of the equation by dragging the arrow
pointer across it while holding down the left mouse button. The selected items
will be highlighted by black-white reversal, in the usual Windows manner. It
should look like this:

3. Delete the selected items by using the Clear command on the Edit menu, or
by pressing the BACKSPACE key or the DELETE key.

4. The insertion point is in the right place, immediately to the left of the = sign,
so you can now enter the new left-hand side. Type in the letter s and attach the X
subscript to it by using the template, in the usual way.

5. Next, we’re going to enclose the right-hand side in a square root sign. We’re
going to “wrap” a template around the existing terms — previously we have
always inserted templates first, and then filled in their slots afterwards. Select

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 MathType User Manual

the entire right-hand side of the equation, watching the highlighting carefully to
see that your selection is correct. It should look like this:

MathType 3 Users Now click on the icon in the Small Bar. The template will be inserted into
MathType 3 required your equation and automatically wrapped around the selected items. When you
you to hold down the insert a template, MathType always wraps it around any selected items.
CTRL key to wrap a
template around the 6. You might be wondering how you would do the reverse of the operation we
selection. This is no
longer necessary.
performed in step 5 — suppose you had an expression enclosed in a square root
sign (or some other template) and you wanted to remove the square root sign but
keep the expression. To do this, you first select the expression under the square
root sign and choose Cut to transfer it to the Clipboard. Next, select the (now
empty) square root sign, and press BACKSPACE or DELETE to remove it. Finally,
choose Paste to bring the expression back from the Clipboard.

7. Finally, we have to change the n in the denominator of the fraction to n – 1.

Position the insertion point in the denominator slot, to the right of the n, by
clicking near the point indicated by the arrow pointer in the picture below:

Then, simply type –1 to change the denominator.

Color 8. Let’s now suppose we want to change the color of the term sX from black to
You can customize the red. Select the term using the mouse, and then choose the Color command on the
Color menu using the Format menu. A submenu appears containing a list of colors. Choose Red and
Edit Color Menu
command in the Color release the mouse. The selected term will become red (you will have to click
submenu. outside the equation to de-select the term in order to see the new color).

9. We’re finished editing the equation, so close the MathType window. If a

dialog appears asking if you want to save your changes, click Yes. Once the
MathType window has closed, your word processor will become active and
you’ll see that your document now contains the modified equation.

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 Chapter 4: Tutorials

Tutorial 4: Including Text in an Equation

In our next tutorial, we show you how to enter words and phrases in an
equation, and also how to handle function name abbreviations that MathType
does not recognize. We are going to create the following equation:
Prob( A ∩ B) Probability that both A and B occur
Prob( A | B) = =
Prob( B) Probability that B occurs

1. First, open a new MathType window using one of the methods you’ve
already learned. Then type Prob(A|B). The result will be

Controlling Italics Using its built-in table of function names, MathType has recognized Pr as an
To assign regular (non- abbreviation for “probability” and set it in the Function style, while o and b are
italic) style to function regarded as variables. In this tutorial, we want to use Prob, rather than just Pr, as
names, use Function on
the Style menu, rather our abbreviation for “probability”. You might think that you can fix the problem
than just removing the by just making the o and b non-italic, but we don't recommend this. If you
italics. simply remove the italicization, MathType will still regard o and b as variables,
which is not what we intend. The right approach is to select Prob and choose
Function from the Style menu. This will remove the italics, but it also tells
MathType that Prob is the name of a function, which will affect spacing and
translation into languages such as LATEX and MathML.

Copying and Dragging 2. Create the fraction in the middle term of the equation. You can copy and
To re-use part of an paste Prob(A|B), and modify it for re-use in the numerator and denominator.
existing equation, select You can find ∩, the set intersection symbol, on the palette. Your equation
the part and then use
the Copy and Paste should now look like
commands, or drag and
drop. Hold down the
Control key when
dragging to copy the
selection.
3. Construct the fraction on the right-hand side of the equation by using the
template again. The insertion point will be positioned in the numerator, ready to
type the text.

Typing Text 4. If you just start typing characters into the numerator slot, MathType will
Before typing normal assume that they are variables, so they will be italicized, and any spaces you type
words and phrases, will be ignored. To type ordinary words and phrases, you should first choose
choose Text from the
Style menu. Text from the Style menu. Then type Probability that both A and B occur. The
numerator of our fraction will look like this:

This is what we want, except that the word “both” should be bold and the A and
B should be italic.

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