Superscript and Subscript Copy and Paste

Why some letters have no Unicode superscript

Unicode never set out to provide a superscript alphabet. ¹ ² and ³ arrived early because they were already in Latin-1 for footnote marks and units like m². The remaining digits were added later so the set would at least be consistent.

The letters came from somewhere else entirely: the Spacing Modifier Letters and Phonetic Extensions blocks, which exist to write phonetics, IPA and linguistic notation. A letter got a raised form only if some scholarly tradition needed it. Nobody was building an alphabet, so the result has holes.

That history explains the exact gaps. Lowercase superscript covers every letter except q. Superscript capitals are missing C, F, Q, S, X, Y and Z. Subscript is thinnest of all: seventeen lowercase letters, a schwa, and five Greek letters, with no capitals whatsoever.

• No superscript q, and no subscript b, c, d, f, g, q, w, y or z.
• No subscript capital letters exist in Unicode at all.
• ᶜ (c), ᶠ (f) and ᶻ (z) come from rarer blocks and are missing from some older fonts, so they may show as boxes.
• If you need a letter that does not exist, use real superscript formatting instead of faking it.

Superscript and subscript shortcuts in Word, Google Docs and Pages

In Microsoft Word on Windows, press CTRL + SHIFT + = for superscript and CTRL + = for subscript. Both are toggles: press the same keys again to return to normal text. On Word for Mac they are CMD + SHIFT + + and CMD + =.

Google Docs uses CTRL + . for superscript and CTRL + , for subscript (CMD + . and CMD + , on a Mac). Apple Pages uses CTRL + CMD + + and CTRL + CMD + -, and LibreOffice Writer uses CTRL + SHIFT + P and CTRL + SHIFT + B.

These shortcuts apply character formatting, which is different from the characters on this page. The letter stays a normal letter and the software simply draws it smaller and raised, so it works for every character in the alphabet and scales with your font. Whenever your editor supports it, that is the better choice.

• Word for Windows: CTRL + SHIFT + = superscript, CTRL + = subscript.
• Word for Mac: CMD + SHIFT + + superscript, CMD + = subscript.
• Google Docs: CTRL + . superscript, CTRL + , subscript.
• Pages: CTRL + CMD + + superscript, CTRL + CMD + - subscript.
• Word autoformats ordinals as you type, raising the st in 1st and the th in 4th. Turn it off under AutoCorrect Options if you do not want it.

HTML sup and sub tags versus Unicode characters

On a web page, write x² and H₂O rather than pasting raised characters. The digit stays a normal digit in the source, so a search for x2 still finds it, the size scales with whatever font you use, and assistive technology is told that the 2 is an exponent rather than part of the word.

Unicode characters have the opposite trade-off. They need no markup and they survive anywhere text goes, including places that strip HTML, but they depend on the reader's font, they cannot be restyled, and they break plain text search.

For real mathematics, neither is ideal. MathML or a LaTeX renderer such as KaTeX handles nested exponents, fractions and limits properly, and keeps the expression machine readable.

• Use <sup> and <sub> in HTML, or CSS vertical-align with a smaller font-size.
• Use the Unicode characters where HTML is not available.
• Use MathML or LaTeX for anything more complex than a single exponent.

When Unicode superscript is the right choice

There are plenty of places where you simply cannot apply formatting, and those are exactly where these characters earn their keep. Any single-line text field that stores plain text will accept them.

The common cases are social profiles and chat: an Instagram or TikTok bio, a display name on X or Discord, a YouTube channel description, a Reddit comment, a WhatsApp message. Spreadsheets are another: Google Sheets cannot format part of a cell, so a pasted ² is the only way to get a raised two into a label.

They also work in file names, CSV exports, YAML and JSON values, email subject lines, SMS, alt text and code comments. Before you commit to one in a username, paste it in and save, because some platforms normalise or reject characters from the phonetic blocks.

Superscript and subscript in Excel and Google Sheets

Excel can format part of a cell, but only if the cell holds text. Click into the cell, select just the characters you want to raise, press CTRL + 1, tick Superscript or Subscript and press Enter. This will not work on a number, on a date or on the result of a formula, because Excel formats those as a whole.

Google Sheets has no superscript option at all. Pasting the Unicode character is the only way, which is why m² and H₂O in a Sheets header are almost always real characters rather than formatting.

Both apps can build the character in a formula. UNICHAR returns a character from its code point, so =UNICHAR(178) gives ², =UNICHAR(179) gives ³ and =UNICHAR(8322) gives ₂. Join it to a label with ="Area (m"&UNICHAR(178)&")".

What to watch out for

These characters are text, not styling, and that has consequences worth knowing before you scatter them through a document.

Search is the big one: a page that says x² will not match someone searching for x2, because ² is a different character from 2. Sorting and numeric parsing treat the raised digits as symbols too, so a spreadsheet will not add them up.

Screen reader behaviour varies by engine. Some announce ² as squared, some as two, and the phonetic letters may be read as plain letters or skipped entirely. Font coverage is the other risk: the digits are almost universal, but the rarer letters are missing from some system fonts and will render as empty boxes.