I been doing it in a slow, inefficient way. Wanting to write 10 to the 21st power I’ve been typing out 10 and 21, reducing the font size of the 21, then using Format>Font>Baseline>Raise repeated five times to get exponent where I wanted,
I really hope there is a faster way.
Format -> Font -> Baseline -> Superscript would eliminate the need for multiple “Raise” steps.
If this is something you do often, you might also consider creating an “exponential” character style. Just be aware that you’ll need to pay a little extra attention at the Compile stage, especially if your “writing” format is significantly different from your “output” format. See Section 15.6 in the manual for more information about Styles generally, and Section 24.5 for discussion of the relationship between Styles and the Compile command.
If your work involves a lot of equations or similar complex formatting, you might be interested in a Markdown-based workflow, which would let you use LaTeX for this kind of thing. See Chapter 21 for more about that option.
Katherine
Excellent. Thank you!
I write lots of exponential numbers (p = 1.5 × ⁻¹⁴) and I normally use unicode characters for this (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_s … perscripts). This means it is universal (copy and paste to other apps justs works) and “semantically” correct. It needs a font that has the correct glyphs (most do) but the benefits are this does not depend on styling[1] or any particular app. For real nerds there is a unicode keyboard built-in to macOS, but I prefer to use a snippet manager (in my case Alfred) to paste in sets of superscript and subscript characters, then just select what I need.
Superscripts: ⁺⁼⁽⁾⁻¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁰
Subscripts: ₁₂₃₄₆₇₈₉₀
Fractions: ⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁄₀₁₂₃₄₆₇₈₉
Multiply: ×
The second way as Katherine mentioned is if you use markdown and styles, at least for superscript and subscript, the converter is smart and will convert the style into the correct unicode glyphs for you depending on your output format.
[1] The text engine that scrivener uses sometimes changes the line height to “fit” the sub/superscript in, and this looks messy IMO. With unicode characters the typography is much better, the glyph has been specially designed and line height is not manipulated. A very smart text engine would use unicode symbols where available and then fall back to simulated styling otherwise.
There’s a Unicode keyboard built into MacOS? Where, oh where, can a nerd like myself learn more of this?
Apple → Preferences → Keyboard → Input Sources. Click the plus sign to add, and search for Unicode.
This is also the mechanism used to switch among language-specific keyboards.
Katherine
My numerical memory is pretty good so I used to remember quite a few unicode hex codes, but snippet and keyboard tools like bettertouchtool and Alfred made my brain lazy and I now only occasionally remember unicode codepoints… 
Another nerdy trick if you haven’t seen it is that you can reveal the whole unicode table in the “Show Emoji and Symbols” viewer, use the gear icon and “Customize List…” and scroll down to the final entry “Code Tables”; unicode browsing heaven (⌃⌘[space] to show it at any time)!
Oh. Memorising lots of two-byte codes. I was over that when assemblers were invented, tho at one time I did have a lot of EBCDIC memorised so that I could read punched cards that weren’t printed across the top, and a fair bit of ASCII as well. But those sets are miniscule compared to the Unicode universe. I was hoping for something that enabled me to customise an onscreen keyboard or table or something that was a bit less laborious to use while drafting than the MacOS Show Emojis and Symbols. I have a third-party keyboard (SciKey) for iOS that I can customise with three keyboards-full of special symbols, which I mostly use for abbreviations in notes and synopses. {Switch keyboard, type ‘∴’ instead of ‘therefore’, switch back.)
I was hoping for something like that for MacOS, maybe as a menu bar resident app, that showed my customised subset, let me click one, and retracted itself out of my way. Show Emojis and Symbols, even if it lets me see the entire Unicode universe, has more friction. It never opens to Favourites, I have to double-click to insert a char, and it hangs around my screen getting in my way until I close it. Then I have to open it again, it’s not showing Favourites.…
Blah.
Thanks so much, @Nontroppo & @Kewms for your replies! Just because the answer wasn’t what I hoped doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate your effort.
Note to self: Must stop posting on forums at 2 am when I’m tired and grumpy.
No worries! I also agree that the ergonomics of “Emoji & Symbols” really is not great, it hasn’t really been designed to be keyboard accesible or easily adapts to your preferences.
If you go to System Prefs >Accessibility > Keyboard > Panel Editor… you can customise toolbars for the accessibility keyboard, and these can easily insert unicode text etc. I’ve never used them as I don’t need any floating UI for this, but it is a native way to build custom keyboard panels in macOS. I just stick to BetterTouchTool and/or Alfred snippets, good enough for my needs.
You can show the whole keyboard with these buttons above, or just show the toolbar alone and they can be customised for each app…
Thanks, I’ll take a look at it!
