Plotting with sub and superscripts on the PlotLabels

Question

Bug persists through 12.0.

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I'm trying to produce a plot with PlotLabels that include sub- and superscripts. However, I haven't been able to do it consistently. Currently I'm trying to do this with the basic math assistant palette and the code is thus:

Plot[30, {x, 0, 605}, PlotStyle -> {Dashed, Thick, Black}, 
PlotLabels -> "\!\(\*SubsuperscriptBox[\(x\), \(s\), \(*\)]\)"]

But there is rather strange gap between the plot and the label which you can see from the picture below. Is there a way to move the label closer to the plot?

Running the same code without the sub and superscripts produces no issue.

Answer 1

Looks like a bug in PlotLabels to me - my guess is that when measuring the size of the label, it does not take into account how big the rendered string will be, only the raw (rather long) string. A work-around is to wrap the label in Row@{...}:

Plot[30, {x, 0, 605},
 PlotStyle -> {Dashed, Thick, Black}, 
 PlotLabels -> Row@{
  "\!\(\*SubsuperscriptBox[\(x\), \(s\), \(*\)]\)"
 }
]

Other potential wrappers include StandardForm[...] and TraditionalForm[...] (which will render the label a bit differently) - essentially anything that hides the raw string from PlotLabels seems to do the trick.