Finding the proper ASCII character for superscript "r"?

Question

Does the superscript ASCII code for the letter r in lowercase exist? I have found the letter e, but in french 1st is 1er and so we are missing the r portion. This seems to be a special character outside the ASCII range of available characters?

Answer 1

There are no superscript letters in ASCII. ASCII contains only the basic Latin (English) letters A–Z, a–z, digits, and a small collection of other characters. There are only 128 code positions in ASCII.

In Unicode, there are more characters (about 1,000,000 code positions, about which a little over 100,000 have currently been assigned). They include “ᵉ” U+1D49 MODIFIER LETTER SMALL E, which belongs to the Phonetic Extensions block, which means that it has been included due to its use in phonetic notations, not due to use in normal writing systems of human languages. I think it is the “superscript e” that you have found; I cannot imagine what else it might be. There is really no law against using such characters as simple superscript letters, but it isn’t particularly recommendable either.

Anyway, there is no corresponding “r”, simply because a superscript r is not used in phonetic notations (widely enough).

In general, superscript letters as often used e.g. in English “1st” or French “1er” should be regarded as stylistic variants of normal letters rather than independent characters. At least this is the Unicode position, which is what software vendors normally adhere to. So you cannot indicate superscripts at the text level but at a higher “protocol level”.

Depending on software context, this could mean 1) using superscript command in a word processor like MS Word (select letter(s) and use a formatting command); 2) using sup markup in HTML; 3) using Opentype sups feature, when supported by the software and the font. The last option is the only typographically really acceptable: it means using a superscript glyph designed by a typographer, whereas the other options use just reduced-size letters and place them higher

Answer 2

The superscript r letter can be coded as denary 0691 (or 691) [Unicode: 2B3 or 02B3]. Similarly, a few of the alphabet characters are available as superscripts in Unicode's Phonetic Extensions Supplement and others as shown below. [NB: Not all alphabet characters are available as superscripts; just these ones to my knowledge.]

Here's a list of these superscript characters…

Superscript Small b → Denary 7495; Unicode: 1D47 ᵇ

Superscript Small c → Denary 7580; Unicode: 1D9C ᶜ

Superscript Small d → Denary 7496; Unicode: 1D48 ᵈ

Superscript Small f → Denary 7584; Unicode: 1DA0 ᶠ

Superscript Small g → Denary 7586; Unicode: 1DA2 ᶢ

Superscript Small h → Denary 0688; Unicode: 02B0 ʰ

Superscript Small j → Denary 0690; Unicode: 02B2 ʲ

Superscript Small k → Denary 7503; Unicode: 1D4F ᵏ

Superscript Small m → Denary 7504; Unicode: 1D50 ᵐ

Superscript Small n → Denary 8319; Unicode: 207F ⁿ

Superscript Small p → Denary 7510; Unicode: 1D56 ᵖ

Superscript Small t → Denary 7511; Unicode: 1D57 ᵗ

Superscript Capital H → Denary 7544; Unicode: 1D78 ᵸ

Superscript Capital I → Denary 7590; Unicode: 1DA6 ᶦ

Superscript Capital L → Denary 7595; Unicode: 1DAB ᶫ

Superscript Capital N → Denary 7600; Unicode: 1DB0 ᶰ

Superscript Capital S → Denary 0738; Unicode: 02E2 ˢ

Superscript Capital U → Denary 7608; Unicode: 1DB8 ᶸ

Superscript Capital V → Denary 7515; Unicode: 1D5B ᵛ

Superscript Capital X → Denary 0739; Unicode: 02E3 ˣ

Superscript Capital Z → Denary 7611; Unicode: 1DBB ᶻ

Cf: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_articulation#Unicode_support_of_superscript_IPA_letters