# Formatting Equations

How do I make math, like x^2, show up right in CL?

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Wrap it in back-tick symbols, which look like “”, and are on the same key as the ~ on american keyboards, like:

content: "The equation is x^2"

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If you want to format math here in the support forum, you’ll want to wrap in in a dollar-sign, e.g. x^2

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Does this work in Titles too?
I’m trying:
title: “Solving 2x^2-2x-1=11 by graphing”
and it doesn’t seem to.

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No. Formatted math won’t work in titles. Titles show up in a lot of places where it’s hard to fit math, so that’s unlikely to change soon. Sorry.

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ah, okay. Thanks for the confirmation.

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Side request: it would be nice if you could have a “mini” note component on the same screen as Card Sorts / “Full Screen Graphs” / Marble Slides.

Then one could have nicely typeset instructions in a not huge font, and not break the title behaviour.

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I’m having trouble getting a square root to show up in a CL note. I’ve tried sqrt3 and sqrt(3) and sqrt{3} but its not turning into a square root symbol when displayed.

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You’ll have to wrap it in backtick symbols (same key as ~), use latex and double up on any backslashes. Like this:

Protip: you can get a latex expression for most anything by typing it into the graphing calculator to get the format you want and then copying and pasting into CL, but just remember to double up any backslashes for it to work correctly.

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I’m having some trouble with the the LaTeX in an Expression Input. I’d like the input box to be pre-filled with this:

But I can’t get the underscores. I’ve tried escaping with \ and double escaping with \ \ but it doesn’t work. Here’s the LaTeX I used in my TeX editor to get this image: y = __ (x - __)^2 - __

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I cannot figure out how to make an inequality appear as content…

Can you please show me how to fix input content? Thank you in advance!!!

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LaTeX commands require an extra backslash because CL treats it as an escape character. Thus your inequality should be: y\\le-\\frac{1}{3}x-3

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I use an image slide for the instructions. Save the image below as png file, drag it to an image slide, check the Large Card box. Preview and click the card to enlarge. You can see an example here: Desmos: Instructions for using Excel and Paint to make png files for Card Sort activities.

This worked for me:

content: “y = \\underline{\\ \\ \\ \\ }(x - \\underline{\\ \\ \\ \\ })^2 - \\underline{\\ \\ \\ \\ } `

A double backslash followed by a space makes a math space. I think it looked better with 4 of these underlined, but fewer or more with spaces before or after might look better for your purposes.