Bold vectors in LaTeX

1. 
   Jyo said:
   August 8th, 2008 on 9:04 pm

   Just saying thanks — I found this helpful.

2. 
   Mort said:
   September 18th, 2008 on 12:53 pm

   Ditto! This is precisely what I was looking for. Thanks!

3. 
   madhu said:
   October 28th, 2008 on 8:32 pm

   I was wondering how to get rid of the dots when doing \hat{i} or \hat{j}
   The dots under the hat really annoy me

4. 
   sec said:
   December 24th, 2008 on 2:59 pm

   \hat{\imath} and \hat{jmath}

5. 
   sec said:
   December 24th, 2008 on 3:00 pm

   edited to correct:

   \hat{\imath} and \hat{\jmath} reply to madhu

6. 
   Robert Paynter said:
   June 17th, 2010 on 5:28 am

   How about Greek letters as vectors, i.e. they need to be upright (Roman), and bold. The one I really want is phi, this ought to do it but doesn’t:

   \mathbf{\mathrm{\phi}}

   I have been following a wild goose chase around the LaTeX documentation and still haven’t pinned it down – do any of you guys know?
   Robert

7. 
   Jon Ahlquist said:
   January 29th, 2011 on 2:52 pm

   To get bold upper-case Greek letters inside math mode, one can use \bf, for example: {\bf \Phi}.
   To get bold lower-case Greek letters inside math mode, an example is {\mbox{\boldmath $\phi$}}.
   For characters that I use often, I define commands such as:
   \newcommand{\bPhi}{\bf \Phi}
   \newcommand{\bphi}{\mbox{\boldmath $\phi$}}

   On p. 386 of The TeXbook, Knuth gives a macro for “poor man’s bold” (\pmb) which enables you to generate a bold, although slightly fuzzy, version of any symbol by reprinting it with slight offsets.
   \def\pmb#1{\setbox0=\hbox{#1}%
   \kern-.025em\copy0\kern-\wd0
   \kern0.050em\copy0\kern-\wd0
   \kern-.025em\raise,0433em\box0 }
   Using that, one could enter \pmb{$\phi$}.
   Note that the dollar signs around \phi are needed inside the \pmb{ } argument even if \pmb{ } occurs inside math mode.

8. 
   Tord said:
   June 17th, 2011 on 7:54 am

   Thanks alot!

   Just want to add that if you want the hats to be “bold”, just switch the order on the last line:

   \renewcommand{\hat}[1]\mathbf{{\oldhat{#1}}}

9. 
   Alex said:
   June 17th, 2011 on 9:39 am

   Great tip, thanks!

10. 
    Mark said:
    January 25th, 2012 on 4:55 am

    Thanks!

    Works fine for Latin letters. But the Greek letters will be displayed as if no \vec{} was applied.

    An alternative to \mathbf is \boldsymbol which makes everything bold including the Greek letters. So just replace \mathbf by \boldsymbol if you want that effect.

11. 
    Mark said:
    January 25th, 2012 on 5:05 am

    This, you might say, has the disadvantage that \boldsymbol leaves the Latin letters in italic font.

    However, it is possible to combine both effects by simply applying both commands as I just found out. The resulting \vec redefinition would be:

    \let\oldhat\hat
    \renewcommand{\vec}[1]{\boldsymbol{\mathbf{#1}}}
    \renewcommand{\hat}[1]{\oldhat{\boldsymbol{\mathbf{#1}}}}

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