Unicode subscripts and superscripts
Unicode characters that represent sub- or superscripts in plain text
Unicode has subscripted and superscripted versions of a number of characters including a full set of Arabic numerals. These characters allow any polynomial, chemical and certain other equations to be represented in plain text without using any form of markup like HTML or TeX.
The World Wide Web Consortium and the Unicode Consortium have made recommendations on the choice between using markup and using superscript and subscript characters:
When used in mathematical context (MathML) it is recommended to consistently use style markup for superscripts and subscripts [...] However, when super and sub-scripts are to reflect semantic distinctions, it is easier to work with these meanings encoded in text rather than markup, for example, in phonetic or phonemic transcription.
Uses
The intended use when these characters were added to Unicode was to produce true superscripts and subscripts so that chemical and algebraic formulas could be written without markup. Thus H₂O (using a subscript 2 character) is supposed to be identical to H2O (with subscript markup).
In reality, many fonts that include these characters ignore the Unicode definition, and instead design the digits for mathematical numerator and denominator glyphs, which are aligned with the cap line and the baseline, respectively. When used with the solidus or the Fraction Slash, they produce an almost typographically correct diagonal fraction, such as ³/₄for the ¾ glyph. Super and subscript markup does not produce a correct fraction (compare markup 3/4 or 3⁄4 with precomposed ¾). The change also makes the superscript letters useful for ordinal indicators, more closely matching the ª and º characters.
Unicode intended that diagonal fractions be rendered by a different mechanism: the Unicode fraction slash U+2044 is visually similar to the solidus, but when used with the ordinary digits (not the superscripts and subscripts), it instructs the layout system that a fraction such as ¾ is to be rendered using automatic glyph substitution. User-end support was quite poor for a number of years, but fonts, browsers, word processors, desktop publishing software and others increasingly support the intended Unicode behavior.
The public source identifies “Unicode subscripts and superscripts” as unicode characters that represent sub- or superscripts in plain text. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Unicode, subscripts and superscripts.
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This entry incorporates text from “Unicode subscripts and superscripts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.