# Changing font size for equations on electronics SE (and others that are capable of equation generation)

At the electronics stack exchange, I've created plenty of equations to explain something (example). The method to create good looking fractions or subscripts result in nice looking elements, but often are very difficult to read because of their size. Without increasing the browser zoom size, I sometimes can't read it at all. Is there a way to increase the font size of equations to make it more legible in normal zoom?

Somewhat off topic, could someone tell me what the equation editing language is called that is used on there? Is it Tex or LaTex or something else? Could someone link to a full manual on it? So far I've just been learning it through viewing other posts through the edit feature, a very cumbersome method.

• As far as I can tell, it's MathJax. Jun 5, 2014 at 15:35

If you know you're going to need a lot of subscripts, you can dictate a font size in your MathJax equation. From your post, you had an equation with two levels of subscripts, which is pretty much illegible at normal settings:

$$\frac{V_{t_p}}{V_{t_n}}$$

However, you can add size modification tags to your equation to help make it legible. For example, I added the \Large tag and it was much easier to read.

$$\Large\frac{V_{t_p}}{V_{t_n}}$$

You can see the before and after effects in the rendered image below:

From this reference, a few modifiers that will increase the size are:

• \large
• \Large
• \LARGE
• \huge
• \Huge
• Perfect, please add this answer to the metaEE area as well so that we have a solution as I've changed that question from feature request to support. Jun 5, 2014 at 19:00

I think the best solution for hard-to-read formulas (usually those with multiple indices) is to enable zoom upon click or hover. To enable zoom, right click any formula on the site and select the desired zoom trigger:

For example, I selected "hover". When hovering over any formula, I see it nicely zoomed in:

The option to always scale all math is also available (see the screenshot above), but this might make very long formulas harder to read (they may break between lines, and zoomed-in inline formulas stick out of surrounding text).

The setting should be sticky, i.e., remembered in a cookie.

Or, if sufficiently many EE users think that the font size in formulas should be increased, that can be done site-wide, by changing MathJax configuration. E.g., the configuring script could include MathJax.Hub.Config({ "HTML-CSS": {scale: 120} });. This is something you can bring up for discussion on meta.EE.

As a general reference for MathJax, MathJax basic tutorial and quick reference is useful. Note however that Electrical Engineering uses \$...\$ delimiters for inline formulas instead of $...$ as on most other sites.

• It's an interesting workaround, but I don't think it addresses what I'm after fully. I'm explaining using equations to other people, and I've seen other people complain about small text/images. Since I write the formulas, I know what's in them. It's the consumers of the content that I'm wanting to format it for. Jun 5, 2014 at 17:18
• @horta There is no such functionality, for a good reason. It should be the consumer's decision to zoom or not to zoom, and how much. I would not want someone to be able to zoom the text, images, or formulas for me.
– user259867
Jun 5, 2014 at 17:21
• @horta But if sufficiently many EE users think that the font size in formulas should be increased, that can be done site-wide, by changing MathJax configuration. E.g., the configuring script could include MathJax.Hub.Config({ "HTML-CSS": {scale: 120} });. This is something you can bring up for discussion on meta.EE.
– user259867
Jun 5, 2014 at 17:38
• Ah, that makes more sense. I agree that zoom should be up to the user. It's just the default seems a bit off depending upon the contents of the formula. I'll see about adding a feature request to increase the size over there. Jun 5, 2014 at 17:39