Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Hi,

I am currently writing on my bachelors thesis in applied physics and need to write down a simple chemical reaction in a formula. to that end i need to have a + sign in a superscript to denote positively charged hydrogen atoms: something like H^{+}. with numbers and letters this command works just fine, however, if i try to do it with symbols like + or -, it doesnt. is there another way to do superscripts with symbols?

thx for your support

Greetings and welcome to the community forum!

OO Math follows a rudimentary grammar and plus and minus are operators that expect two operands, one on either side.

So you can either provide empty operands: H^{{}+{}}

Or, put quotes around it to mark it as plain text: H^"+"

You'll see that the two give slightly different results.

For something as simple as H+, you can also use text with a superscript, rather than a formula.

Edit: PS:

You can also define a new symbol (Tools > Catalog ...) and write it as H^%plus

thank you very much! your answer was very helpful!