Arc symbol in LaTeX – Different ways

In this tutorial, I will show you how to print or write arc symbol in LaTeX.

If you just want to print the arc symbol then this command is enough to do that alone.

\overset{\huge\frown}

But this will not print arc symbol over letters.

We will go with the easiest way first:

Arc symbol using Fourier package in LaTeX

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fourier}
\begin{document}
$\widearc{XYZ} \widearc{xyz}$
\end{document}

Output:

You can see there is a very small horizontal space between these two.

To give space you can do this:

$\widearc{XYZ} \quad \widearc{xyz}$

Arc symbol using tipa

This is not going to be as easy as other math symbols.

We can obtain the arc symbol from tipa font family.

I will define a command \arc that will place arc symbol over any given text.

But the most challenging part is, we need to measure the width and height of the text.

Then only we will create a \vbox with the resized arc symbol with the original text. This will help us to get the proper vertical alignment.

Check the code below:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\makeatletter
\DeclareFontFamily{U}{tipa}{}
\DeclareFontShape{U}{tipa}{m}{n}{<->tipa10}{}
\newcommand{\arc@char}{{\usefont{U}{tipa}{m}{n}\symbol{62}}}

\newcommand{\arc}[1]{\mathpalette\arc@arc{#1}}

\newcommand{\arc@arc}[2]{%
  \sbox0{$\m@th#1#2$}%
  \vbox{
    \hbox{\resizebox{\wd0}{\height}{\arc@char}}
    \nointerlineskip
    \box0
  }%
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

$\arc{CodeSpeedy}$

\end{document}

Output:

\begin{document}

$\arc{CodeSpeedy}$ $_{\arc{xyz}}$

\end{document}

Now this will look like this:

Arc Symbol over a specific letter in a word in LaTeX

If you want to have the arc symbol over a specific letter in a text, you can do this: (The rest of the above part of the code will be the same)

\begin{document}

x$\arc{y}$z

\end{document}

Output:

Another way to do the same:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx,tipa}
\newcommand{\arc}[1]{{
  \setbox9=\hbox{#1}
  \ooalign{\resizebox{\wd9}{\height}{\texttoptiebar{\phantom{A}}}\cr#1}}}
\begin{document}
\arc{CodeSpeedy}\ \arc{GOOD}
\end{document}

Output: