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I have the following code. The problem is the outer brackets are the same size as the inner bracket so it doesn't look that nice. I have tried \left and \right and it doesn't make a difference. The code is below, any help will be appreciated.

     $Card$\left((X\times \{0\})\cup (Y\times \{1\})\right)$
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Consider using $\bigl(...\bigr)$ rather than $\left(...\right)$. –  Werner Jan 19 at 22:08
Manually scale with say \big, and please learn to write Card using a macro, see \DeclareMathOperator –  daleif Jan 19 at 22:09
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up vote 6 down vote accepted

Your query points to one of (several) good reasons why it's not a good idea to always use \left and \right: If what's being enclosed by the left/right pair is just the basic size, the resulting parentheses aren't enlarged just by the presence of \left and \right. (Another case when using left/right fails is when the expression being enclosed by the pair spans more than one line. Still another case arises when items such as summation symbols with limits are being enclosed.)

The remedy: Use \bigl( and \bigr) instead of \left( and \right). If \big isn't big enough, you could try \Big. And, as @daleif has already noted in a comment, do take the time to set up macros for "math operators" such as "\Card". You'll save yourself a lot of time writing your paper (and debugging mysterious errors...).

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$\Card\bigl((X\times \{0\})\cup (Y\times \{1\})\bigr)$
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