Talk:Subscript and superscript

Merge with Superior Letter
Typography websites and dictionaries both indicate that superscript and superior letter are perfect synonyms, and these two articles have a lot of overlap. Since superscript is the more common appellation, I suggest to merge superior letter into this article. We would certainly replace the existing article with a redirect. Citynoise (talk) 13:29, 9 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I desagree. Al least in Spanish (I am from Spain), superscripts and superior letters are two distinct uses of this tipographic style. Superior letters (known in Spanish as "voladitas", "little flying" letters as the Superior letters article states) are always used for abbreviations, and are always underlined (where possible). Superscripts are used in Spanish to put inline calls and notes (like the famous wikipedia's ), math powers, chemical isotopes and valences, etc, and never are underlined. So I vote to keep the separate articles. -Ricardo Cancho Niemietz (talk) 15:35, 12 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I think a merge makes sense. Include the info about Spanish voladitas as part of the subscript and superscript article.   Randall Bart    Talk   20:06, 25 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I also disagree. The current status with cross-linking to these related, but distinct, topics is appropriate.  It is clear from the articles that these are not "perfect synonyms", whatever some individual sources may say.  —DIV (128.250.247.158 (talk) 08:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC))


 * Disagree. These topics are actually distinct, and few English speakers would look for Superior letter when they are thinking about a superscript or a subscript. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:48, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

There is a stark contradiction between the Superior letter article and this article. Superior letter says The style is distinct from superscript, whereas here it says In typesetting, such types [i.e. super/subscript] are traditionally called superior and inferior letters, figures, etc., or just superiors and inferiors and then it goes on to say Superior and inferior figures on the baseline [what is a superior figure on the baseline?] are used for fractions and most other purposes, while lowered inferior figures are needed for chemical and mathematical subscripts which isn't at all compatible with the use of "superior" in the corresponding article that restricts the term to word abbreviations. I don't care either way, but there should be a minimum of consistency across articles, and if there are conflicting nomenclatures this should be made explicit. Typographically I think there is something to the view that superscript and superior are in fact distinct features, e.g. superscripts can contain anything, extend beyond the top of the line, have superscripts themselves etc. --88.73.31.231 (talk) 17:28, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I believe that it is worth mentioning, at least, that, in relation to digital text in word processing applications, superior letters and superscript have become synonymous, and that they are both produced the same way and are identical in modern typography. Could we say that superscript and superior letters only differ in context regarding function, but that otherwise, in appearance, they are identical? --Illinois347 18:49, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


 * Though "superior letters" doesn't include numbers, which are more commonly used in modern English writing, from what I can tell, all superior letters are correctly described as superscript letters. (The clashing intros above still haven't been harmonized.) Though there are some differences in traditional typography depending on use (e.g. math equation vs. prose ordinal) these differences are described in Subscript and superscript. The section Subscript and superscript notes that this also happens for some non-letters, so it is weird to have an article only for the letters that do that, when letterness is not the distinguishing characteristic. Superior letter has only 5k of readable prose, Subscript and superscript only has 14k, so these will easily fit together without being too long, especially when redundant prose is eliminated. Right now it feels to me like each of these articles only tells two-thirds of the same story. -- Beland (talk) 05:29, 28 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I agree.  Superior Letters are a use case of Superscript, and should be merged into this article, leaving behind a redirect.  Letters can be underscored before being superscripted, to give 'Superior Letters', eg in Microsoft Word 365.  FreeFlow99 (talk) 12:34, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Other Script Positions
This is a well written article, but is mention given to the other placements (eg overscript, underscript; also pre-subscript, pre-superscript as per text of patent 5182709) elsewhere? I couldn't find articles for the other positions, much less a meta-article discussing (or at least mentioning) all of the positions...

Examples include Mathematical notation, which commonly uses overscript and underscript (perhaps all six), and Furigana, which appears to be an instance of overscript given yokogaki (horiztonal text).

--Eibwen 19:44, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

For the latter see ruby characters.--88.73.31.231 (talk) 17:32, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

TeX code
Isn't there a way to get superscripts in TeX without going into a maths/equation environment? Like for "1st", for example, or "Mrs". Perhaps as Superior letter? —DIV (128.250.80.15 (talk) 09:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC))


 * No. Yes. Sort of.


 * Superscripts as such can only be produced by TeX in math mode. You can use, or, if you have to cope with spaces in the superscript,  . There is a LaTeX macro called \textsuperscript which you can use like  , but it actually expands to something equivalent to the \hbox \scriptsize code above (along with a lot of garbage), so it also uses math mode even if it's not apparent on the surface (and it's not really easier to type).


 * If you really want to avoid math mode, you can try some box shuffling, such as . This solution however relies on empirical font-dependent constants (like the 0.8ex above), which makes it rather inelegant.


 * Ordinal superscripts are bad style anyway, so the best way to write "1st" in TeX is . -- EJ (talk) 10:54, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Update the Desktop Publishing section
The Desktop Publishing section uses outdated programs. It would be better if the latest versions of each of these programs (e.g. Word 2010 instead of Word 2002) were used, especially because some of these shortcuts might have changed since the old programs were used.

HTML superscripts placed "too high"
"Note that superscripts are usually placed too high for many typographic purposes." The HTML section makes the vague and unsupported claim that superscripts in HTML are placed too high. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Einstein9073 (talk • contribs) 18:45, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
 * This looks fishy, indeed.—Emil J. 09:33, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

It may be a reference to the fact that HTML/CSS superscripts are taller than the rest of the line, and therefore make the line spacing uneven if the author does not use additional workarounds (e. g., artificially reducing the line height of the superscript). ToaKraka (talk) 20:42, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Merge with Unicode subscripts and superscripts
There is already more extensive information about the layout of super- and subscripts in Unicode within the present article. It seems likely to me that a user will search here before searching for a specific Unicode-related version of the article. (It took me a few days to accidentally happen upon this article, where it is revealed that there is in fact no superscript q in Unicode!) babbage (talk) 23:11, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Position adjustment in italic/oblique/slanted styles no longer relevant, example doesn't work out.
Maybe this should include a line that this may not happen in modern browsers?

I'm using Aurora 13.0a2 (2012-03-28) and the text renders with perfect kerning for me. At first I didn't understand what the example was about.

Maybe it should be replaced with a picture of the problem in a browser with incorrect rendering, and accompanied by an explanation that it occurred like that in version X of browser Y. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.119.189.36 (talk) 20:15, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Plural?
How do you form plurals of variables with subscripts? Let's say I want to form the plural of ε0. Is it ε0s? Or ε0's? Or something else? --Polis Tyrol (talk) 14:10, 21 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Why would you need a plural for ε0 if there can be only one ε0?

Error in article
In the section, does this text look correct:

--LukasMatt (talk) 03:28, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Intro section: what citation?
In which part of the statement "in order to get visual consistency, a typographer would make super/subscripts slightly heavier than a simple shrink in size would be" do we need citation? It's not "heavier than normal glyph", but "heavier than shrunken normal glyph". Line widths of course got lighter in the simple shrinking process, and has to be compensated for.

Just curious because to me it's like needing a citation to back up the statement "to make up for the stolen $50, Sam would earn or somehow get another $50", which is plain silly. Adgj1144 (talk) 10:29, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Naught vs. nought
The following references suggest that when expressions like x0 are spelled out, it is preferable to write "nought" instead of "naught" (and this is not only a matter of British English vs. American English): Should we update the article accordingly? Ebony Jackson (talk) 21:26, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * As a rule of thumb, "nought" (or "aught") is preferred when dealing with numbers, while "naught" is preferred outside of math. -- Prof. Merrill Perlman, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism
 * "nought" is also synonym with "zero" in British English -- Marius Alza
 * Nought is conventionally used in British English for the number zero...In both British English and American English, naught is used in nonmathematical contexts to mean nothing. -- grammarist.com

Naught / nawt is generally only used in Northern dialects of British English, and not used in professional contexts, therefore ought not to be used in Maths. FreeFlow99 (talk) 12:14, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Missing information on Mathematical subscripts below the line
If we are referring to the probability of something we may use an italic p immediately followed by a subscript to refer to the item the probability refers, eg C to look like: pC.

I came to this page with the intention of finding out why it is written this way around rather than Cp, in the same way as N0 and N9 where the something comes first and the quality is the subscript.

This is where people would come to understand the apparent contradictory notations. FreeFlow99 (talk) 11:46, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Hatnote violates WP:LINK?
Specifically the section "In articles, do not link to pages outside the article namespace, except in articles about Wikipedia itself (and even in that case with care – see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Self-references to avoid)." 2600:1700:38D0:2870:5C75:EB8B:61D6:C614 (talk) 07:41, 18 July 2023 (UTC)