Superscript Generator

How it works

• Characters are mapped to their superscript equivalents where available.
• Unsupported characters are left as-is.
• Output updates instantly.

Use cases

The strange history of Unicode superscripts

Unicode superscript characters are scattered across the standard for historical reasons: ¹ ² ³ live in Latin-1 (inherited from old European character sets where they supported footnotes and squared/cubed measurements), the rest of the digits (⁰ ⁴–⁹) in the Superscripts block, and most letters in the Phonetic Extensions block — added for linguists writing pronunciation, not for styling. That patchwork coverage is why almost every lowercase letter has a superscript form (ᵃ ᵇ ᶜ …) but capital Q simply does not exist.

Like subscripts, these are real characters, not formatting — they survive anywhere text does, which makes them the only way to write x² or 10⁻³ in an Instagram bio or a plain-text email.

Everyday uses beyond math

Ordinals (1ˢᵗ, 2ⁿᵈ, 3ʳᵈ), trademark-style annotations, footnote markers in plain-text documents, exponents in physics homework (E = mc²), and temperature or angle notation all read better superscripted. Spreadsheet users paste superscript units into cell labels (m² for area, m³ for volume) where cell formatting cannot style part of a string.

Readability tip: strings of superscript letters are hard to read at small sizes, so superscript works best for one to three characters attached to normal text rather than whole words.

Which letters have a true Unicode superscript, and which do not

Unicode superscripts are not a font effect. Each one is a separate character that exists only because somebody standardised it, which means coverage is uneven in ways that have nothing to do with logic. The digits are complete: zero through nine all exist. Most lowercase letters exist. But there is no superscript q, and the uppercase set is badly incomplete, so a capitalised word will come out as a mixture of raised and normal letters.

This is the actual frustration behind most searches for a superscript generator: the output looks broken and it is not obvious why. The character support chart in the mode selector above lists exactly which characters convert and which are returned unchanged, so you can see before you paste whether your text will survive. Anything missing stays as ordinary text rather than being silently dropped, which is the right trade-off but does make the gap visible.

Where coverage matters, there are two workarounds. For mathematical notation, prefer the digits and the small set of operators that do exist, which covers exponents, ordinals and footnote markers. For anything longer, use real formatting instead: HTML sup, a word processor’s superscript style, or LaTeX. Unicode superscripts exist for plain-text contexts such as social bios, usernames and chat, where no formatting is available at all.

FAQ