How to Format and Scale Brackets and Absolute Values in LaTeX for Confluence

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Hi again from the LaTeX Math for Confluence team!

In this part of our practical LaTeX series, we’ll look at how to format brackets and absolute values and how to size them dynamically in your formulas. These small tricks will improve the visual quality of your mathematical notation in Confluence and make your formulas look clean and professional.

LaTeX basics: brackets, absolute values, and norms

In LaTeX, you can use various types of brackets and bars. Here are some common examples:

(x + y)              → parentheses
[a, b]               → brackets
\{c-d\}              → braces
\langle x \rangle    → angle brackets 
|y|                  → absolute value
\|\vec{v}\|          → double bars for norms

📌 Please remember to escape using { } for braces in LaTeX because curly braces are used for grouping and defining arguments, so unescaped braces can break your code or produce unexpected results.

Why scale brackets?

When you have tall expressions like fractions, sums, or integrals, normal parentheses or braces can look too small and messy. For example, this command renders parentheses too small relative to the fraction inside:

( \frac{a}{b} )  

How to scale brackets automatically in LaTeX

To scale brackets automatically, wrap your delimiters with the \left and \right LaTeX commands. Thus, they will adjust their size to the content: 

\left( \frac{a}{b} \right) 

📌 Please note that \left and \right must be used in pairs. If you want only one side to have a delimiter, use a dot as a placeholder on the other side: 

\left. \frac{a}{b} \right| 

It renders a right vertical bar only.

How to adjust bracket size manually in LaTeX

While \left and \right automatically resize brackets to fit their contents, LaTeX also gives you full manual control using the commands \big, \Big, \bigg, and \Bigg.

These commands increase bracket size progressively and work with most delimiters like parentheses (), square brackets [], braces \{\}, and vertical bars |.

In this example, you can visually see the difference in bracket sizes.
 

\big( \frac{a}{b} \big), \quad
\Big[ \frac{a}{b} \Big], \quad
\bigg\{ \frac{a}{b} \bigg\}, \quad
\Bigg| \frac{a}{b} \Bigg|

Using left and right sizing commands

To control only one side of the brackets, you can also use:

• \bigl, \Bigl, \biggl, \Biggl → for left brackets

• \bigr, \Bigr, \biggr, \Biggr → for right brackets

These LaTeX commands provide finer control and improve readability, especially in large or asymmetric expressions.

Scaling delimiters in the middle of an expression

The \middle command is used in the middle of expressions with \left and \right delimiters to create a properly scaled vertical bar or some other symbols.

Without \middle|, a regular | will appear too short or visually misaligned when used inside large brackets, especially if the expressions are tall (like fractions, integrals, or sums). 

\left\{ \frac{a}{b} \,\middle|\, \sum_{i=1}^{n} x_i > 0 \right\}

This command will automatically scale the vertical bar to match the height of the left and right delimiters, just like \left and \right do.

Wrapping up

Using the right brackets and making sure they’re the right size helps your LaTeX formulas look clean and easy to read. Whether you use automatic sizing with \left and \right, or adjust brackets manually, apps like our LaTeX Math for Confluence (Cloud) make it easy to write and format equations exactly the way you need.

✅ Coming next: Matrices and aligned equations. In the meantime, you can explore more tips in our recent guide on writing math equations in Confluence.