Question about superscripts and subscripts

[adlister]

Is it true that Obsidian doesn’t support ordinary Markdown sub and superscripts, or am I doing something wrong?

For example:

100m^2

When I preview that, the 2 is not superscripted.

I searched the forum, and found that I could use LATEX, like so:

100m $^2$

which leaves a space between the m and the superscripted 2

or

$100m^2$

which gets rid of the space but puts the 100 into the Latex font. That’s fine, but if I want to subscript a word, in a document that has not math, it looks a bit funny, e.g.

$Equality_1$ vs. $Equality_2$

I may have just missed something obvious, but if not, what’s the reasoning behind not supporting this one bit of what I think is standard Markdown formatting?

[mnvwvnm]

Two suggestions:

1. You can use html tag <sup>your text</sup>. But this is not practical… A more practical way is create a template using Templater plugin syntax:

<sup><% tp.file.selection() %></sup>

Then create a shortcut/hotkey (via Templater plugin settings) to this template. To use it you select the wanted text and apply the shortcut.

2. Second way - install the plugin cMenu.

EDIT: In 1. for “subscripts” create another template with <sub><% tp.file.selection() %></sub>

[nemorosa]

cMenu is a great and quick option, but I just wanted to mention that workarounds using latex can have a decent look too:

100m$^2$

Equality$_1$ vs. Equality$_2$

x$_4$

H$_2$O

Word$^{label}$

Word$_{label}$

[jwl]

You can type 100m$^2$ without a space, and it will render the superscript.

Also, you can use 100m$_2$ for subscript.

[AquaHabe]

Then create a shortcut/hotkey (via Templater plugin settings) to this template. To use it you select the wanted text and apply the shortcut.

[atiz]

These are helpful, but don’t answer the OP’s question (“what’s the reasoning behind not supporting this one bit of what I think is standard Markdown formatting?”)
I’m also curious because find the latex a bit tedious for this.

[DEV_Scribbles]

The developers explains the markdown in Obsidian here, and afaik for those, the only way to add superscripts and subscripts is the html or latex way.

The ^ character is mostly for footnotes

[saf-dmitry]

The right way to represent what you want is to put both quantity and unit inside the \pu command (“pu” stands for “physical unit”):

$\pu{100 m2}$

which renders as

More examples:

$\pu{1.23 kg.m^{-3}}$

$\pu{8.31432e3 N.m.kmol^{-1}.K^{-1}}$

For more info see Manual for: mhchem for MathJax, mhchem for KaTeX

[Dor]

@adlister

standard Markdown formatting

Well, it’s not standard.
A remnant of the variant wars