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Why is there no super or subscript "q" or "Q" characters defined in UTF-8?

The header says it all. I just would like to be able to write,

image

inline but I am stuck with eᵖᐟᵠ. Is there any way at all to achieve this simple thing?

Solution

  • UTF8 is an encoding scheme, if you are asking about why they aren't in Unicode:

    As @JosefZ said, there are superscript characters for Q; U+A7F4 and q; U+107A5, but not very many fonts support them, even workhorses like Cambria Math.

    Some of the superscript characters are in the Unicode blocks Latin Extended C, Latin Extended D, and Latin Extended F. These don't have wide font support, especially Latin Extended F. BabelStone Roman supports these Latin Extended blocks, but does not support Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols (U+1D400 - U+1D7FF). Julia Mono is also really good for mathematical symbol support, but does not support the Latin Extended blocks.

    There are still missing superscript characters in Unicode, and I don't see the issue being fixed, maybe ever. In 2021 Kirk Miller proposed the addition of superscript S and superscript X to Unicode at code points A7F0 and A7F1 (L2/21-089). The Unicode people (UTC #167) "noted" it, without rejecting it, and recommended no further action stating:

    "The examples do not show the two modifier capital letters being used for phonetic transcription, but instead for morphological analysis apparatus, tone reconstruction and historical analysis, for which arbitrary letters could be used. In our view, rich text (or font-based stylistic sets) would be appropriate, but not plain text."

    That's the same as killing it.

    So, meanwhile, there is no superscript S, X, or Z in Unicode. And there probably won't be. We might get a "flying pig" emoji 🐖🛫 (U+1F416 + U+1F6EB) -that's valid Unicode- instead.

    You can use ᐟ (U+141F), Canadian Syllabics Final Acute as a superscript slash symbol for division, also missing from Unicode, and ᙆ (U+1646) Canadian Syllabics Carrier Z makes a pretty good superscript capital Z, but S and X... well... depending on the font, ᵡ (U+1D61) Modifier Letter Small Chi can work for X.

    There are a LOT of holes in subscript in Unicode, if you need subscript other than numerals and a few characters here or there, just use TeX.

    Here are your superscripts. You will likely see some boxes here, you can copy and paste into an application with supporting fonts.

    Superscript
⁰ ¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹ 
ᵃ ᵇ ᶜ ᵈ ᵉ ᶠ ᵍ ʰ ⁱ ʲ ᵏ ˡ ᵐ ⁿ ᵒ ᵖ 𐞥 ʳ ˢ ᵗ ᵘ ᵛ ʷ ˣ ʸ ᶻ
ᴬ ᴮ ꟲ ᴰ ᴱ ꟳ ᴳ ᴴ ᴵ ᴶ ᴷ ᴸ ᴹ ᴺ ᴼ ᴾ ꟴ ᴿ   ᵀ ᵁ ⱽ ᵂ ᵡ 𐞲 ᙆ
⁺ ⁻ ⁼ ⁽ ⁾ ᐟ