Talk:Subscript and superscript

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[edit] Merge with Superior Letter

Typography websites[1] and dictionaries[2] 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 ^{[citation needed]}), 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] TeX code

Isn't there a way to get superscripts in TeX without going into a maths/equation environment? Like for "1^st", for example, or "M^rs". 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 M$^{\rm rs}$, or, if you have to cope with spaces in the superscript, M$^{\hbox{\scriptsize foo bar}}$. There is a LaTeX macro called \textsuperscript which you can use like M\textsuperscript{rs}, 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 M\raise.8ex\hbox{\scriptsize rs}. 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 "1^st" in TeX is 1st. -- EJ (talk) 10:54, 30 January 2008 (UTC)