# $\tilde S$ is not always getting correctly rendered.

When I wrote $\tilde S$ in an answer it was rendered correctly, but when I wrote the same in a comment, it looked like just an $S$ with a horizontal bar over it, as if I had written $\bar S$. And here on meta, it also looks like just a bar over an $S$.

• Looks fine here. Let's try in a comment: $\tilde{S}$. Yup, also fine. Could be your browser, or the MathJax rendering engine you use. Which are you using? – Daniel Fischer Mar 28 '16 at 17:54
• Test: $\tilde S$, $\tilde{S}$, $\displaystyle\tilde S$, $\displaystyle\tilde{S}$ $\qquad$ – Michael Hardy Mar 28 '16 at 18:50
• Here on meta is looks correct in a comment but not in the posted question. $\qquad$ – Michael Hardy Mar 28 '16 at 18:51
• This comment, I guess? Looks fine for me. – Daniel Fischer Mar 28 '16 at 18:58
• The $\tilde{S}$ in the body of your question is looking a little off to me, but it looks right in the title and the comments here. Also the comment that Daniel Fischer mentioned looks fine to me also. – Reinstate Monica Mar 28 '16 at 19:10
• I've seen this on numerous occasions (this post being one of them). In the end, I've blamed it on some zoom peculiarities. In this zoomed-in snapshot of this post (on 1920x1080) you can see that actually anti-aliasing is applied to make the "bar" in $\tilde S$ look slightly different from the one in $\bar S$. (Don't ask me how I noticed that slight AA difference.) Oh, and that is produced with HTML-CSS Fast Preview with STIX fonts installed on a Chrome clone/Win 7. – Lord_Farin Mar 28 '16 at 20:04
• Don't use \tilde and \bar. Instead use \widetilde and \overline. Compare and contrast: $\tilde S\ \widetilde{S}$ and $\bar S\ \overline{S}$. – Asaf Karagila Mar 28 '16 at 20:56
• $\widetilde S$ $\qquad$ – Michael Hardy Mar 28 '16 at 23:04
• It works fine on Ubuntu with chromium. – Henricus V. Mar 29 '16 at 5:33
• It appears that standard tilde $\tilde{X}$ versus wide tilde $\widetilde{X}.$ And bar $\bar{R}$ versus overline $\overline{R}$ differ on Safari. – Chickenmancer May 6 '17 at 18:12