Using \DeclarePairedDelimiter from mathtools, you could define macros \ceil and \floor, which will scale the delimiters properly (if starred):
\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\DeclarePairedDelimiter\ceil{\lceil}{\rceil}
\DeclarePairedDelimiter\floor{\lfloor}{\rfloor}
\begin{document}
\begin{equation*}
\floor*{\frac{x}{2}} \leq \frac{x}{2} \leq \ceil*{\frac{x}{2}}
\end{equation*}
\end{document}
Result:

Using \DeclarePairedDelimiter from mathtools, you could define macros \ceil and \floor, which will scale the delimiters properly (if starred):
\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\DeclarePairedDelimiter\ceil{\lceil}{\rceil}
\DeclarePairedDelimiter\floor{\lfloor}{\rfloor}
\begin{document}
\begin{equation*}
\floor*{\frac{x}{2}} \leq \frac{x}{2} \leq \ceil*{\frac{x}{2}}
\end{equation*}
\end{document}
Result:

You can define your own macro via the
\defcommand anywhere in your document. For example\def\lc{\left\lceil} \def\rc{\right\rceil}and then just write
\lc x \rc.Or you use the
\providecommandin the preamble, e.g.\providecommand{\myceil}[1]{\left \lceil #1 \right \rceil }to simply use
\myceil{x}in your document.- Use an editor, like vim, that allows for defining shortcuts for quick and efficient editing.
- And, finally, don't forget about readability of your tex document. Check out this thread for some instructive comments on how to write efficient and readable tex math docs.
How do you represent a big floor symbol in LaTeX?
How do you represent a floor symbol with LaTeX?
What other ways can a floor symbol be represented?
You could use \left...\right for stretchable delimiters, or perhaps one of the pairs of the \bigl...\bigr family of commands:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\begin{document}
\[
\Bigl\lfloor\dfrac{1}{2}\Bigr\rfloor\qquad
\left\lfloor\dfrac{1}{2}\right\rfloor
\]
\end{document}

A LaTeX-y way to handle this issue would be to define a macro called, say, \floor, using the \DeclarePairedDelimiter device of the mathtools package. With such a setup, you can pass an optional explicit sizing instruction -- \Big and \bigg in the example code below -- or you can use the "starred" version of the macro -- \floor* -- to autosize the left and right hand brackets. Both possibilities are pursued in the following code.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{mathtools} % for "\DeclarePairedDelimiter" macro
\DeclarePairedDelimiter{\floor}{\lfloor}{\rfloor}
\begin{document}
\[
\floor[\Big]{\frac{1}{2}}
\qquad
\floor[\bigg]{\frac{1}{2}}
\qquad
\floor*{\frac{1}{2}} % autosize vertical dim. of brackets
\]
\end{document}
\usepackage{mathtools}
\DeclarePairedDelimiter{\ceil}{\lceil}{\rceil}
The command \ceil will do; if called as \ceil*{x} it will add \left and \right; you can also call it as
\ceil[\big]{x} \ceil[\Big]{x} \ceil[\bigg]{x} \ceil[\Bigg]{x}
to state explicitly the size of the delimiters.
Here is a simple xparse implementation of \ceil, similar to that provided by mathtools' \DeclarePairedDelimiter:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{xparse}% http://ctan.org/pkg/xparse
\NewDocumentCommand{\ceil}{s O{} m}{%
\IfBooleanTF{#1} % starred
{\left\lceil#3\right\rceil} % \ceil*[..]{..}
{#2\lceil#3#2\rceil} % \ceil[..]{..}
}
\begin{document}
\[\ceil[\big]{x} \quad \ceil[\Big]{x} \quad \ceil[\bigg]{x} \quad \ceil[\Bigg]{x} \quad \ceil*[\big]{\frac{1}{2}}\]
\end{document}
The optional argument is ignored in the starred version of \ceil*[..]{..}.