User Guide

MathType User Manual

Selecting Items in an Equation

Selecting Entire Slots

You can select an entire

slot by double-clicking

anywhere in the slot.

This is analogous to the

way many word

processors allow you to

select a word by double-

clicking on it.

Aligning Lines in Piles

You can align the lines

in a pile in various ways

using the commands on

the Format menu.

As usual in Windows applications, you have to select the items that you want to

operate upon before you choose the command that is to be applied to them. In

MathType, the selected part of the equation will be affected by a subsequent

editing command such as Cut, Copy, or Nudge. To select part of an equation,

you position the mouse pointer over one end of the items to be selected, and then

press and hold down the left mouse button while dragging the pointer over the

equation. The selected items will be highlighted.

Selecting with the Arrow Keys

You can make a selection (or extend a previous selection) by holding down the

HIFT key and pressing the LEFT ARROW or RIGHT ARROW key. Pressing the arrow

key moves the insertion point through your equation, in the usual way, and

holding down the S

HIFT key will cause it to select all the items it passes through.

Selecting Embellishments and Parts of Templates

Holding down the CTRL key allows you to select a character embellishment, such

as a “hat” or overbar, or an item that is part of a template (as opposed to an item

within one of the slots in a template), such as the

in the picture below. If you

hold down the C

TRL key, then the mouse pointer changes from an angled arrow

into a vertical one. You can then select the template component by clicking on it

with the vertical pointer. This is useful if you want to change the size of a

summation sign or nudge a prime to a new position, for example.

The ENTER Key

Pressing the ENTER (↵) key will create a new line with a single empty slot

immediately beneath the slot containing the insertion point. A series of lines

created in this way, one above another, is called a pile. You can use piles to

represent matrices and column vectors, if you prefer them to MathType’s built-in

matrices. Pressing the B

ACKSPACE key with the insertion point at the beginning of

a line will join it back to the line above.