Google Docs Help

Google Docs

• Increase the font size on your document. The equations are the size of your normal font, but that may be too small to see the mathematical expressions while editing them. You can change the font size and then update the Normal text style to match. Alternatively, you can highlight the entire document and change the font size, but this may not apply to text added later.
• Click the Share button at the top right and change who has access so that anyone with the link can view the document. Then you can just submit the link.

Equations

• Use Insert > Equation to insert an equation
• Create the structure before you use it. For example, click on the fraction template before typing the numerator.
• There are some keyboard shortcuts, most notably the ^ and _ give you superscripts and subscripts.
• Matrices are not supported. That might not sound like a big deal, but the trick to displaying piecewise functions is to create a matrix to use as placeholders. In fact, multi-line equations are not supported either. Basically, you don't want to use Google Docs for serious mathematical content, but it will allow for collaboration.
• To get mathematical functions to display properly in an equation, precede them with a backslash. For example: sin x gives \( sin\ x \) while \sin x gives \( \sin x \). This also works for \ln x.