The toolbar makes it easy to discover which types of equations are possible.
Today we’re making it a little easier for users to quickly type equations using
LaTeX equation shortcuts. For anyone who heard of LaTeX before, it’s a document markup language that’s often used by academics to quickly type out complex formulas. In Google Docs, when you’re inside an equation you can type
'\sqrt' followed by a space or a parenthesis to automatically convert the text into a square root sign √. Other examples of useful shortcuts are
'\frac' for a fraction and shorthands like
'\epsilon' for Greek symbols.
If you want to quickly enter a superscript or a subscript while inside an equation, you can do that with '^' and '_'respectively. Here’s a
full list of the automatic equation shortcuts supported in Google Docs.
Text replacementsWe also added the ability to substitute text automatically. For example, you can type '(c)' followed by a space to have it automatically converted into a copyright sign ©, or '2/3' and a space to have it automatically converted into the fraction symbol: ⅔.
This feature is especially useful if there are spelling mistakes that you notice yourself making over and over again. You can right click on a misspelled word, go down to the
AutoCorrect option, and choose a way of automatically fixing this spelling mistake in the future.
If you don’t want text replacements, you can disable them from the
Tools > Preferences dialog. From that dialog, you’ll also be able to manage your text replacements by adding and removing items from the list.
Finally, if a document ever makes an auto-correction that you don’t want, you can press
Ctrl Z (
Cmd Z on a Mac) to undo it.
We hope that these new features will help make you a speedier writer in Google Docs.
Posted by: Evgeniy Stepanov, Software Engineer
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