Hi, I needed to use \boldsymbol recently, and studied the different solutions that have been posted on the mailing list. Using a \hbox wrapper seems to be the easiest way, but none of the definitions using \hbox took care of spacing around the symbols. Since ConTeXt now has equivalents of amsmath's \binrel@ and \binrel@@ commands, here is an improved definition of \boldsymbol. \definetypeface [boldmath] [mm] [boldmath] [latin-modern] [modern] [encoding=texnansi] \unprotect \def\boldsymbol#1% {\preparebinrel{#1}% \currentbinrel {\mathchoice {\hbox{\switchtoformulabodyfont [boldmath]$\m@th#1$}} {\hbox{\switchtoformulabodyfont [boldmath]$\m@th#1$}} {\hbox{\switchtoformulabodyfont [boldmath,script]$\m@th#1$}} {\hbox{\switchtoformulabodyfont[boldmath,scriptscript]$\m@th#1$}}}} \protect \starttext $a \times b$ $a \boldsymbol{\times} b$ \stoptext This is equivalent to \boldsymbol of amsbsy.sty. I have added this to the wiki, Aditya