Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts: Difference between revisions

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== Different guidance for non-HTML rendering ==

Whilst Wikipedia only provides HTML rendering, in some cases that will be subject to further reduction to plain ASCII. Examples include: screen readers, web crawlers, some mailing lists, and public catalogues (like COinS), and copy-and-paste into plain-text only programs, such as a command shell or a 'notepad' editor.

Where a client can be identified as preferring "plain text", we should ''avoid'' sending “10<sup>30</sup>” because that produces athe ''deeply'' unsatisfactory end result like “1030”.

''Please'' can we recommend, in this specific case, sending either Unicode superscript and subscript digits with fraction-slash,<ref>(superscripts U+2070, U+00b9, U+00b2, U+00b3, U+2074 thru U+2079; subscripts U+2080 thru U+2089; fraction-slash U+2044)</ref> or insert circumflex/caret “^” symbols for exponents and solidus “/” for fractions.

Just to be pellucidly clear, I'm talking about what the macrostemplates generate, not what editors write in wiki markup, ''except'' when they're editing the templates themselves.

[[User:Martin Kealey|Martin Kealey]] ([[User talk:Martin Kealey|talk]]) 07:46, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

{{reflist}}

:Perhaps a sufficient change would be to ''strongly'' recommend <code><nowiki>{{sup|</nowiki><i>exponent</i><nowiki>}}</nowiki></code> over <code>&lt;sup><i>exponent</i>&lt;/sup></code> and <code><nowiki>{{sub|</nowiki><i>index</i><nowiki>}}</nowiki></code> over <code>&lt;sub><i>index</i>&lt;/sub></code>, so that those templates can take care of rendering as non-HTML Unicode when indicated by the HTTP client. <!-- Template:Unsigned --><small class="autosigned">—&nbsp;Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[User:Martin Kealey|Martin Kealey]] ([[User talk:Martin Kealey#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/Martin Kealey|contribs]]) 04:15, 6 August 2025 (UTC)</small>

::Although {{t|sup}} doesn't do that. Are you proposing to change that template and similar ones to render non-HTML queries differently to HTML? [[User:Lithopsian|Lithopsian]] ([[User talk:Lithopsian|talk]]) 15:22, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

:::In essence, yes, but that's not a MOS issue.

:::[[User:Martin Kealey|Martin Kealey]] ([[User talk:Martin Kealey|talk]]) 22:23, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

{{talk-reflist}}