html_uncertainty.md

How to typeset a value and its uncertainty in HTML (without a CSS stylesheet)

If you want to quote a value and a plus/minus uncertainty range in HTML, using the <sup> and <sub> tags leaves the values offset, e.g.:

2.3<sup>+1.2</sup><sub>-0.5</sub>

gives:

2.3^+1.2_-0.5

If the webpage supports MathJAX (or something similar), then you could, of course, use LaTeX syntax, e.g.,

$2.3^{+1.2}_{-0.5}$

to give:

$2.3^{+1.2}_{-0.5}$

However, if you just want to use HTML (and don't want/can't use a style sheet), then (heavily based on this SO answer), you could do:

<span style="white-space:nowrap;">
   2.3<span style="display:inline-block;vertical-align:-0.4em;margin-left:0.1em;line-height:1.15em;font-size:70%;text-align:left;">+1.2<br/>−0.5</span>
</span>

Unfortunately, the style attribute gets sanitised by the Markdown renderer used to GitHub, but an image of it looks like:

uncertainty.png