Template:Su/doc

Purpose

Template for creating two smaller lines of text on one actual line, this can be used for scientific notations of uncertainty and physics symbols, such as nuclides and particles.

It was named after the <sup> and <sub> HTML tags, which share the first two letters of their name with this template. This template uses the third letter of the name of these tags, p and b, as the name of the argument that drives the output of the top and bottom line, respectively.

Editors beware: these templates use all kinds of hacky tricks to make the output render correctly in a wide variety of browsers. If you plan to make changes to this template, please make sure you verify that this template renders correctly after those changes in all major browsers. This list includes the latest version(s) of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Arguments

|p=	The contents of the top line.
|b=	The contents of the bottom line.
|a=	The alignment of both lines (|a=r: right-aligned; |a=c: center-aligned; default is left-aligned).
|w=	The size of the characters (|w=f: fixed-width (monospace), otherwise template inherits the current font and context by default).
|lh=	The line height or distance from top to bottom (including top character). Default is 1.2em.

Note on fractions

Usually, when using vulgar fractions it is MOS habit to use &frasl; (⁄) (MOS:FRAC) and {{frac}}. However, in <sub> or <sup> tags, best use the keyboard slash / for readability in most browsers:

X^1⁄2
_7⁄8 (fraction slash) N

and

X^1/2
_7/8 (keyboard slash) Y

Examples

Simple

X{{su|p=a}} X{{su|b=b}} X{{su|p=a|b=b}} {{su|p=a|b=b}}X {{su|p=a|b=b}}X{{su|p=c|b=d}}

X^a
X
_b X^a
_b ^a
_bX ^a
_bX^c
_d

Left-aligned (default)

X{{su|p=aaaaa|b=b}} X{{su|p=aaaaa|b=b}}Y X{{su|p=a|b=bbbbb}} {{su|p=a|b=bbbbb}}X

X^aaaaa
_b X^aaaaa
_bY X^a
_bbbbb ^a
_bbbbbX

Right-aligned

X{{su|a=r|p=aaaaa|b=b}}X{{su|a=r|p=a|b=bbbbb}}X

X^aaaaa
_bX^a
_bbbbbX

Center-aligned

X{{su|a=c|p=aaaaa|b=b}}X{{su|a=c|p=a|b=bbbbb}}X

X^aaaaa
_bX^a
_bbbbbX

Smaller font

{{small|X{{su|p=a}}X{{su|b=b}}X{{su|p=a|b=b}}X}}

X^a
X
_bX^a
_bX

Larger font

{{big|X{{su|p=a}}X{{su|b=b}}X{{su|p=a|b=b}}X}}

X^a
X
_bX^a
_bX

Fixed-width

X{{su|p=...|b=www}}X{{su|w=f|p=...|b=www}}X

X^...
_wwwX^...
_wwwX

Close-spacing

{{su|p=4|b=4}} {{su|lh=0.8em|p=4|b=4}}

⁴
₄ ⁴
₄

Line breaks

Unlike the <sup> and <sub> tags, this template does not always prevent line breaks between the two small lines and the text preceding or following it. Thus, if this template is used to supply a subscript and superscript over a base symbol, the whole structure has to be enclosed in a {{nowrap}}, or this template should be invoked through another template that takes care of the wrapping in an appropriate way.

Note: Without the suggested {{nowrap}}, this is not consistent across all browsers: in Chrome, this is true, whereas in Firefox and Safari line breaks will generally be suppressed after preceding text.

Example: {{nowrap|X{{su|p=a|b=b}}}} → X^a
_b