## LaTeX forum ⇒ Math & Science ⇒ Curly Braces in Equation Topic is solved

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Amitavo Roy
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Apr 06, 2013 11:50 am

### Curly Braces in Equation

I am new with LaTeX. I don't understand why this code line is not working.
\begin{equation}\label{eq:4.20}\eta_{elec}=\left{\frac {\gamma_{j,in} - {\langle{\gamma_j}\rangle}_j} {\gamma_{j,in}-1}\right}\end{equation}

Last edited by cgnieder on Sun Apr 07, 2013 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

localghost
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Location: Braunschweig, Germany
And please always provide a self-contained and minimal example to give an adequate problem description. Those who try to help are rarely motivated to write a complete example from scratch.

If you want curly braces in the output, you have to escape them by a backslash (\) and so make them a command. Curly braces are usually used for grouping so this measure is necessary to get them printed.

The actual error is caused by the fact that \left and \right expect a delimiter (braces, brackets, parentheses). otherwise they will produce error.
\documentclass[11pt]{article}\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}\usepackahe{mathtools}  % loads »amsmath« \begin{document}   \begin{equation}\label{eq:dummy}     \eta_text{elec}=\left\{\frac{\gamma_{j,in} - \langle\gamma_j\rangle_j}{\gamma_{j,in}-1}\right\}   \end{equation}\end{document}

For more clarity in your code you should avoid superfluous braces (see above).

Thorsten
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Amitavo Roy
Posts: 14
Joined: Sat Apr 06, 2013 11:50 am
Thanks a lot, localghost.

Now it is perfect.