How to enter textual subscripts and superscripts?

Question

When I add a sub- or superscript to a letter in a "Text" cell using the "Writing Assistant" palette this letter becomes Italic:

Moreover the letter "v" in the subscript is wrongly formatted as being a variable. How to typeset it as Plain?

Answer 1

You can compute in a separate cell this expression:

Subscript[C, 3 v]

and then paste the output in your in-line text where you need it. Many things will work, including ideas from comments, - compare the difference in the outlook:

Row@{
  Style[Subscript[C, 3 v], 100], Spacer[30],
  Style[Subscript[C, 3 v], 100, "Text"], Spacer[30],
  Style[Subscript[C, 3 v], 100, SingleLetterItalics -> False], Spacer[30],
  Style[Subscript[C, 3 v], 100, FontFamily -> "Amienne"]}

To understand the difference click in any version and press CTRL+SHIFT+E. I guess you need to choose the version more suitable for your case.

While j-- idea is neat and preferable for simple cases, while dealing with complex in-line expressions with many indexes and other italicized forms - it is better compute desirable style at once for the whole expression.

To address programatically issue mentioned by Jens - the gab between characters in the subscript - one could use

Subscript[C, Row[{3 , v}]]

Answer 2

You could take the approach of defining a custom style to make the text look however you like, within the bounds of Mathematica's formatting capabilities. For example, in the private style sheet I paste:

Cell[StyleData["NoItalic"],
 StyleMenuListing->None,
 SingleLetterItalics->False,
 ShowStringCharacters->False,
 AutoSpacing->False,
 ZeroWidthTimes->True
]

Now in a new text cell enter my subscript and select it:

Then I press Alt+0 and enter NoItalic, which yields:

   

As you can see this also addresses the spacing concern that Jens discussed. You can keep multiple styles for different purposes, each with potentially extensive customization.

Answer 3

Stylistically, the Italic toggling, the Text or SingleLetterItalics solutions all still have one problem: the spacing between the 3 and the v is too large because it's treated as if it's a multiplication. What I'd consider correct output would be this:

and not this:

I'm using the version 8 default style, but the argument is the same in version 9.

And how do I get the correct output? Unfortunately, it requires several additional key presses:

• Type C3v without Subscript in an inline cell
• highlight the 3v and press Cmd-$-$ twice to shrink the text size appropriate for a subscript (I needed to re-highlight the 3v while shrinking it)
• with the 3v still highlighted, press Ctrl-$\downarrow$ (on Mac; it's Alt on PC) four times to shift the baseline to subscript level.

I wish I had an easier answer, but if you want the "right" look this appears to be the shortest path. I tried doing the Subscript the normal way and just adjusting the v to the left afterwards, but then I can't get it to be in plain text anymore (it stays italic no matter what I do).

It may be best to define such textual subscripts as "macros" if you plan on re-using them.

Answer 4

You could, for example, type the sentence and the subscript part just as you did using the Writing Assistant pallette. Then, you can highlight the letter C and switch it to Plain using the command Italic (on Windows, Ctrl+I or using the Writing assistants pallette). The same principle works also for the subscript.

Answer 5

One satisfactory workaround is to represent as String all the text and use the option ShowStringCharacters -> False:

Style[Subscript["C", "3v"], "Text", ShowStringCharacters -> False]

I think that such option should be included in the "Writing Assistant" palette. At this moment there is not too many assistance from it...