Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts

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Proposed MoS guideline

Note: the content on this page is not something I made up, it's merely a compilation of guidelines from various MoS pages aimed to let the reader get an overview. jonkerz ♠ 11:26, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Which means it's something somebody else made up.

It's bad enough having these expressions of prejudice at all, without having a separate page for them, which will evolve separately from the rest of MOS as some Secret Master of Wikipedia takes seizin of it.

The first sentence is ungrammatical; the rules are largely arbitrary; and anybody who's interested in formating mathematics or music will be looking at WP:MOSMATH and WP:MOSMUSIC anyway.

Remove the silly general rules here and where you found them; and send the subject sections back to the relevant subjects. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:48, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. There's no reason for this to exist as a separate page: each paragraph of it belongs somewhere else. A. di M. (talk) 15:12, 18 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I see your point, but do not agree with your conclusion. My reasoning for creating this page was because all sup/subscript guidelines are scattered over multiple pages, this page is intended for ease of navigation. If you're interested in how to format music, you go to WP:MOSMUSIC, if you would like to know how to format superscripts you go here. Similar pages include Wikipedia:Manual of Style (abbreviations) and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters). I guess it's a matter of opinion: some go to WP:MOSMUSIC to figure out how to handle a specific music-related problem, some go there to learn how to format music articles in general. Likewise, this page is will teach how to format sub/superscripts in general. That said, I understand if this is a minority point of view and this page should not be included in the manual. jonkerz ♠ 09:41, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If this page to be used, it should itself be made MOS-compliant with regards to the accessibility guidelines, namely WP:COLOR - the "correctness" of some of the examples is indicated by colour alone, and note that coloured text should really only be used if there's a pressing reason to do so. Knepflerle (talk) 16:35, 17 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If you were refering to the comparison in the lead, it's now fixed. jonkerz ♠ 09:45, 19 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Apply to article title?

Do these guidelines apply to article titles? Could it explain why (or why not)? Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:30, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Lost semantic integrity

I'm pretty surprised of this guideline: the semantic integrity of the super/subscript is lost to favour rendering hacks. The real meaning is lost by using <sup> or <sub>: when copy-pasting the example wⁱx²z^{(n + 6)} [w{{sup|i}}x{{sup|2}}z{{sup|(n + 6)}}] you end up with wix2z(n + 6) while the unicode wⁱx²z⁽ⁿ⁺⁶⁾ stays wⁱx²z⁽ⁿ⁺⁶⁾. Presentation shortcomings should be treated separately (by using a different font or by automatically enlarging/shifting sub/superscript to a more visible size, I don't know precisely, I'm no expert) Plus the wikitext is easier to edit in unicode. It's not 2010 anymore, unicode support is great everywhere!--Marc Lacoste (talk) 09:43, 9 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]