I am currently working on a paper which heavily uses \tilde for both lower case letters and capitals in math bold font.

When using \tilde for lower case letters, everything looks perfectly fine, but \tilde{\mathbf{X}} looks a little silly because the symbol is so out of proportion relative to the symbol below it. My solution to this has been to use \widetilde only for capitals instead, but I am concerned about consistency and any personal bias on the aesthetics of tiny tildes over large symbols.

To me, the problem is twofold:

1. If I use \widetilde, I am essentially using two different symbols, \tilde and \widetilde to mean the same thing.

2. When \widetilde is used inside a line of text, it disrupts the spacing (in a very minor way) unless I override that behavior. This would also be inconsistent with the way I've written to avoid any disruption of line spacing by things such as using \displaystyle for my in-text limits and summations.

At this time, I think the best solutions are to either just use a tiny tilde for everything; only use \widetilde in the math environment for capitals and \tilde in-text; or suppress the added spacing because most readers will never notice the difference and this is a somewhat pedantic detail anyway (Is messing with ``vertical kerning'' a big deal?).

I would appreciate any suggestions.

I am currently working on a paper which heavily uses \tilde for both lower case letters and capitals in math bold font.

When using \tilde for lower case letters, everything looks perfectly fine, but \tilde{\mathbf{X}} looks a little silly because the symbol is so out of proportion relative to the symbol below it. My solution to this has been to use \widetilde only for capitals instead, but I am concerned about consistency and any personal bias on the aesthetics of tiny tildes over large symbols.

To me, the problem is twofold:

1. If I use \widetilde, I am essentially using two different symbols, \tilde and \widetilde to mean the same thing.

2. When \widetilde is used inside a line of text, it disrupts the spacing (in a very minor way) unless I override that behavior. This would also be inconsistent with the way I've written to avoid any disruption of line spacing by things such as using \displaystyle for my in-text limits and summations.

At this time, I think the best solutions are to either just use a tiny tilde for everything; only use \widetilde in the math environment for capitals and \tilde in-text; or suppress the added spacing because most readers will never notice the difference and this is a somewhat pedantic detail anyway (Is messing with ``vertical kerning'' a big deal?).

I would appreciate any suggestions.