I testify that I have spent a couple of hours searching for related postings here and on StackExchange with little success. I am using Mathematica 12.3.1.0 on OS 12.6. This is to describe some difficulties I have experienced with editing math symbols in text cells. My question is simply whether others have experienced these problems and of course I would like to know what they or Wolfram programmers have done to fix or work around them.

I found that the default font renders some Greek characters almost indistinguishable from certain Roman characters. For example, alpha is very close to Roman a and gamma looks very much like Roman y. They are lacking the extra curvature needed to make them distinguishable. Since Mathematica has “Math” in the title, one would expect the rendering of math symbols to be flawless. I found I cannot simply change fonts for reasons described below.

I discovered that my version of MMA can accept Latex code by creating a math box using Ctrl-4. (The documentation specified Ctrl-$, but that didn’t work for me.) I tried Ctrl-4 briefly, and was able to write nice math symbols, but I was unable to apply boldface with “\textbf{}”. I am working through some problems with vector symbols that I would prefer to render in boldface rather than superscripted arrows, so this otherwise welcome math box feature will be of little use to me at present. The math box feature also seemed quirky, having a tendency to become uneditable, more trouble than it was worth. This was not an adequate solution to my need for legibly Greek symbols.

For years, I was frequently seeing corruption of text cells in notebooks in which parts of math expressions or whole expressions would disappear or be separated by new lines. It was pointed out to me that one should enter math by prefacing it with Ctrl-Shift-( and closing with Ctrl-Shift-). I tried it and it helped a lot, even though I often forget to close with Ctrl-Shift-), but I was still seeing some corrupted text. Then it was suggested that I not use any font but the default. This comes up in the menu Format —> Show Fonts … as English, Source Sans Pro, 15. So I stopped using other fonts and have since had very few problems with corruption. I have only seen problems with fractions in complicated expressions. (Fractions and superscripts also create problems for text strings rendered by Text[] in code.) But I seem to be stuck with Greek symbols inadequate for math.

That said, I have found Mathematica to be very liberating after years of programming with a variety of notations, not as a professional programmer, but for professional projects involving natural languages and for personal education involving geometry and physics. It seems to be getting more expensive as Wolfram seeks to put everyone on a subscription basis, but I will continue to use it as long as I can.