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

Revision as of 19:06, 17 August 2010

Revision as of 09:45, 19 August 2010

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Subscripts and superscripts should be wrapped in <code>&lt;sub></code> and <code>&lt;sup></code> tags, respectively, with no other formatting info. Do not use the [[Unicode subscripts and superscripts]] <span class="bad_example" style="color: #B20000;">²</span> and <span class="bad_example" style="color: #B20000;">³</span>, or [[List of XML and HTML character entity references|XML/HTML character entity references]] (<code>&amp;sup2;</code>). Rather write <code><nowiki>²</nowiki></code> and <code><nowiki>³</nowiki></code> to produce the superscripts <span class="example" style="color: #006F00;">²</span> and <span class="example" style="color: #006F00;">³</span>. The superscripted 2 and 3 are easier to read, especially on small displays, and ensure that exponents are properly aligned. Compare:

: <span class="bad_example" style="color: #B20000;">wⁱx²y³z⁽ⁿ⁺⁶⁾</span> (Unicode superscripts) to

: <span class="example" style="color: #006F00;">wⁱx²y³z^{(n + 6)}</span> (<code><nowiki>wⁱx²y³z^{(n + 6)}</nowiki></code>)

<br />

: <span class="bad_example" style="color: #B20000;">1 + ''x'' + ''x''² + ''x''³ + ''xy''⁴³</span> (<code>&amp;sup2;</code>) to

: <span class="example" style="color: #006F00;">1 + ''x'' + ''x''² + ''x''³ + ''x''⁴</span> (<code>&lt;sup>2&lt;/sup></code>)

Font sizes and such should be entrusted to be handled with stylesheets.<!--see discussion on Talk:Template:Sup-->