superscript

Superscript is a typographic arrangement in which a character or group of characters is set higher than the baseline and smaller than the surrounding text. It is commonly used to indicate mathematical exponents, chemical charges, isotopes, and footnotes, as well as ordinal indicators in some typographic traditions. Superscript contrasts with subscript, which is set below the baseline.

In mathematics and science, superscripts denote exponentiation, as in x^2 or e^iπ + 1 = 0. In chemistry, superscripts express ionic charges, such as Na+, or isotopic notation, as in 14C. In typography, ordinal indicators like 1st or 2nd are sometimes written with the letters in superscript; other languages may place diacritics or annotations in superscripts for editorial marks.

Representations in digital text vary. HTML renders superscripts with the sup element or via CSS vertical-align: super. In TeX/LaTeX, the ^ character in math mode creates a superscript. Unicode includes a range of superscript characters, mainly digits and a small set of punctuation and letters, for example ⁰ ¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹, ⁺, ⁻, but many letters do not have a dedicated superscript form, requiring font fallbacks or image-based workarounds.

Font support and accessibility are practical considerations: not all fonts include true superscripts, and screen readers may interpret them differently from normal text. When possible, semantic markup (HTML sup, or mathematical markup) improves clarity and usability.