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#### 11.7.2 Subscripts and superscripts

Just like in LaTeX, ‘`^`’ and ‘`_`’ are used to indicate super- and subscripts. Again, these can be used without embedding them in math-mode delimiters. To increase the readability of ASCII text, it is not necessary (but OK) to surround multi-character sub- and superscripts with curly braces. For example

    The mass of the sun is M_sun = 1.989 x 10^30 kg.  The radius of
    the sun is R_{sun} = 6.96 x 10^8 m.

If you write a text where the underscore is often used in a different context, Org’s convention to always interpret these as subscripts can get in your way. Configure the variable `org-use-sub-superscripts` to change this convention. For example, when setting this variable to `{}`, ‘`a_b`’ will not be interpreted as a subscript, but ‘`a_{b}`’ will.

`C-c C-x \`

  In addition to showing entities as UTF-8 characters, this command will also format sub- and superscripts in a WYSIWYM way.