3 Best Ways to add Superscript and Subscript in Google Docs

We all have used and are still using the Superscripts and Subscripts in our Word documents, whether it is a school assignment or your research Thesis. In this post, we will explore how we can add superscript and subscript in Google docs.

We will see how we can achieve this through three different ways and also discuss keyboard shortcuts for adding superscript and subscript in Google docs.

How to Add Superscript and Subscript in Google Docs

Add Superscript in Google Docs using the Format option

This applies if you already have text typed in and would like to format the text correctly, such as the dates(adding th), chemical formulas, or mathematical formulas. This can be done using the format option from the Google docs main toolbar. The steps are explained below:

Step 1: In the image below, a sample Google doc with three examples a date, a math equation & a chemistry equation. So looking at the examples in the image we can be sure that the items marked red need to be formatted as Superscript.

Step 2: Selecting the text that you want to Superscript in Google docs, as shown in the image below marked as [1], click on the Format option from the menu bar as indicated in [2]. You should see another sub-menu showup. Click on the first option text as marked in [3]. Finally, select the Superscript option marked [4] in the image below:

Follow and repeat the procedure in step 2, for Example 2 and Example 3. You should be able to achieve the Superscript in Google docs just as the image below:

Add Subscript in Google Docs using the Format option

Adding a subscript to your google docs document follows the same approach as adding superscripts in google docs that we have just learned above. Just as in the previous procedure, we will format the text highlighted in red as shown in the image below to subscripts in google docs using the Format option.

Step 1: We first select the highlighted text in red, then click on the Format option. Then click on the text option in the submenu marked as [3] in the image. On the following third sub-menu, click on the Subscript option indicated as [4] in the image below.

Repeating the same procedure for other text objects highlighted in red, you should be able to correctly format the chemical equation as shown in the image below:

Method 2: Add Superscript and Subscript in Google docs using Insert option

Add Superscript in Google docs using Insert option

Step 1: In this example for this writing, we will create a simple text as a to the power of 3. So we first type in the letter a then click on the Insert option from the Google docs main menu, then click on the Special Characters from the drop-down menu indicated as [2] in the image below:

Step 2: Now, you should see the insert Special characters dialog box if the categories option is not pre-selected. Click on the drop-down and select categories as shown in the image below:

Step 3: After you select the categories option, you will see the 3 dropdown options button (categories, symbol, arrows). Click on the arrows dropdown, and you should see another sub-menu. Click on the Superscript option as illustrated in the screenshot below:

Step 4: After selecting the superscript option (marked as [1]), you should see a small box containing alphabets, symbols & digits. In this case, we are interested in adding digit 3 as superscript, so we select 3 as indicated in the image below marked as [2] to insert superscript in Google docs. You should then see the 3 added as a superscript to a marked as [3] in the screenshot below:

Add Subscript in Google docs using Insert option

Step 1: All the steps are similar to how we added Superscript in Google docs using the insert option. So for this example, we plan to add 10 as a subscript to the word log to express Logarithm to the base 10. Just as in previous steps, click on Insert from Google docs main menu bar, then from the submenu, click on Special Characters just as indicated in the image below and marked as [1] and [2], respectively.

Step 2: if you see only one drop-down option, click on the drop-down and select categories. Then you should see three dropdowns, and under the Arrows drop-down menu, click on the Subscript option just as illustrated in the image below:

Step 3: In the final step, we can see a small character box containing digits, alphabets, and symbols. Since we need to add (10) as a subscript. We first click on 1 & then 0 to the subscript to log as shown in the screenshot below:

Keyboard Shortcuts for adding Superscript and Subscript in Google Docs

We have very simple keyboard shortcuts for adding Superscript and Subscript in Google docs. This is available for both Windows PC and Mac.

Keyboard shortcut to add Superscript in Google docs

In this case, we wish to convert all the text marked in red to Superscript format.

Select the text that you wish to format as Superscript, then press the keyboard shortcut (control + Fullstop or dot)

Keyboard Shortcut for Superscript in Google Docs

CTRL + .

Keyboard shortcut to add Subscript in Google docs

Like the keyboard shortcut for adding superscript in google docs, we have a keyboard shortcut for adding Subscript.

We first select the text that we wish to format as Subscript, then use the keyboard shortcut (CTRL + ,) – Control + comma for windows & cmd + , for mac users.

Keyboard Shortcut for Subscript in Google Docs

CTRL + ,

Google Docs Subscript & Superscript FAQs