Creating a newcommand for giving tilde (~) in LaTeX

[tobeornottobealttfan]

Hi all,

I want to write symbols with tilde (~) on their head. The general command for this is 

\tilde(a)

Now I can define a shortcut if I am using it multiple times. The standard way to do it is to include a line 

\renewcommand{\t}[1]{\tilde{#1}}

in the preamble. Then 

\t{a}

will give me the same result. However I don't want to use the curly braces. What I want is that 

\ta

give the same result as  

\renewcommand{\t}[1]{\tilde{#1}}

 

I can do renewcommand/newcommand for individual alphabets but was wondering whether I could write a single command that does the same.

 

Does anyone know how to do it?

Thanks

[tikker]

22 minutes ago, tobeornottobealttfan said:

will give me the same result. However I don't want to use the curly braces. What I want is that 

\ta

give the same result as  

\renewcommand{\t}[1]{\tilde{#1}}

 

As far as I know this is not possible, as the interpreter wil interpret it as the command "ta".

 

What you are looking for may partially already exist, however, as LaTeX offers shortcuts for diacritics for normal text:

\"o -> gives ö
\~a -> gives ã
\`e -> gives è
\'i -> gives í
\^u -> gives û

Extending this to random symbols I don't think is possible without the curly brackets, as it needs a way to distinguish the command from the argument. For symbols it may help that you (likely) have another backslash, but for normal letters how will it distinguish between \ta (the command \ta) and \ta (the command \t with argument a)?

[tobeornottobealttfan]

35 minutes ago, tikker said:

 

Extending this to random symbols I don't think is possible without the curly brackets, as it needs a way to distinguish the command from the argument. For symbols it may help that you (likely) have another backslash, but for normal letters how will it distinguish between \ta (the command \ta) and \ta (the command \t with argument a)?

I see.
This makes sense.

 

Thanks for this.

36 minutes ago, tikker said:

\"o -> gives ö
\~a -> gives ã
\`e -> gives è
\'i -> gives í
\^u -> gives û

 

[tobeornottobealttfan]

46 minutes ago, tikker said:

 

\"o -> gives ö
\~a -> gives ã
\`e -> gives è
\'i -> gives í
\^u -> gives û

However, I can't seem to make it work in mathmode. Any ideas for that?

[tikker]

1 hour ago, tobeornottobealttfan said:

However, I can't seem to make it work in mathmode. Any ideas for that?

In math mode you can use

\text{\"o}

or

\mathrm{\"o}

Use the latter if you want normal text, the former if you still want it printed in "math style".