HTML tag

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The tag is used to define a superscript text, which appears half a character above the regular line and is rendered smaller than the rest of the text. The tag is commonly used to define footnotes and formulas.

You must use the tag only for typographical reasons. It shouldn’t be used for styling purposes. If you want to change the vertical position of a text, you can use the CSS vertical-align property with the "super" value.

The tag is used to define the subscript.

Here are some use cases for a element:

Representing superior lettering used in some languages when rendering specific abbreviations.
Representing exponents (e.g. "x².").
Representing ordinal numbers (e.g. "5^th" instead of "fifth").

Syntax

The tag comes in pairs. The content is written between the opening () and closing () tags.

Example of the HTML tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>
      E = mc<sup>2</sup>, where E is the energy of the object, m is the weight, c is the light speed in vacuum.
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

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Result

Example of the HTML tag used with the CSS vertical-align property:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
    <style>
      sup {
        vertical-align: sup;
        font-size: medium;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Example of the sub tag</h1>
    <p>
      Here is some text <sup> with the sup tag</sup>.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis ...
    </p>
    <p>
      Reference site about Lorem Ipsum,
      <sup> giving information on its origins</sup>, as well as a random Lipsum generator.
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

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Example of the HTML tag used with the tag:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Title of the document</title>
    <style>
      sup {
        vertical-align: sup;
        font-size: medium;
      }
      
      sub {
        vertical-align: sub;
        font-size: small;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Example of the sub tag</h1>
    <p>
      Here is some text
      <sub> with the sup tag</sub>.
    </p>
    <p>
      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis ...
    </p>
    <p>
      Reference site about Lorem Ipsum,
      <sup> giving information on its origins</sup>, as well as a random Lipsum generator.</p>
  </body>
</html>

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Attributes

The tag supports Global attributes and the Event Attributes.

How to style tag?

Common properties to alter the visual weight/emphasis/size of text in tag:

CSS font-style property sets the style of the font. normal | italic | oblique | initial | inherit.
CSS font-family property specifies a prioritized list of one or more font family names and/or generic family names for the selected element.
CSS font-size property sets the size of the font.
CSS font-weight property defines whether the font should be bold or thick.
CSS text-transform property controls text case and capitalization.
CSS text-decoration property specifies the decoration added to text, and is a shorthand property for text-decoration-line, text-decoration-color, text-decoration-style.

Coloring text in tag:

CSS color property describes the color of the text content and text decorations.
CSS background-color property sets the background color of an element.

Text layout styles for tag:

CSS text-indent property specifies the indentation of the first line in a text block.
CSS text-overflow property specifies how overflowed content that is not displayed should be signalled to the user.
CSS white-space property specifies how white-space inside an element is handled.
CSS word-break property specifies where the lines should be broken.

Other properties worth looking at for tag:

CSS text-shadow property adds shadow to text.
CSS text-align-last property sets the alignment of the last line of the text.
CSS line-height property specifies the height of a line.
CSS letter-spacing property defines the spaces between letters/characters in a text.
CSS word-spacing property sets the spacing between words.