Writing Latex in WordPress

I tend to minimize the amount of symbols and equations in my blog posts. That said, when it comes to precision and conciseness, there is no competition to just spelling it out in math. WordPress.com has an acceptable level of support for Latex on blog posts [1].

Inline latex should be enclosed within the $latex and $ symbols respectively. For example $latex e^{i \pi} + 1 = 0.$ renders $e^{i \pi} + 1 = 0.$ You may want to change the foreground and background colors of the rendered image to make it more palatable. So use additional attributes like in this example $latex e^{i \pi} + 1 = 0 &bg=e3dbce&fg=000000$ resulting in a more pleasing image $e^{i \pi} + 1 = 0.$

For display equations, $latex \displaystyle \sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{n^2} = \frac{pi^2}{6}. &bg=e3dbce&fg=000000$ produces

$\displaystyle \sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{n^2} = \frac{\pi^2}{6}.$

To align the display equations, enclose them within <p align="center">...</p> to get this output

$\displaystyle \sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{n^2} = \frac{\pi^2}{6}.$

Personally, like I said, I keep the amount of math on the page to a minimum. If it’s excessive in your case, you want to get hold of one of these tools to handle the rendering and color issues, not to mention the annoyance of writing \$latex many times over. Despite these small inconveniences, some monster Latex users continue to use wordpress this way. So really, what are you complaining about? :)

[1] There is no getting around the fact that the Latex support would be better if Mathjax were an option, but that requires you to have access to the HTML output of the page. WordPress.com does not give access to that unless you subscribe to their Business plan. Blogger on the other hand has free support for Mathjax, see an example here.