About Superscript Nine Superscript Digit Nine
Superscript Nine Superscript Digit Nine is the Unicode character ⁹ at codepoint U+2079 in the Superscripts and Subscripts block of the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP).
Reference
The raised nine, and the far side of the split that runs through the superscript digits. Unicode files it as No with numeric value 9 and bidirectional class EN, in Superscripts and Subscripts rather than in the Latin-1 range where superscript one and superscript two sit. The difference is not only which block: this character is East Asian Width Neutral with line-break class AL, where the Latin-1 three are Ambiguous with class AI. Its compatibility decomposition is <super> 0039, so NFKC and NFKD replace it with a plain 9. There is no HTML named entity and no Windows-1252 slot.
Typical uses
- Exponents in plain text where no styling is available: 10⁹
- Footnote markers in contexts that cannot carry markup
- Completing a superscript sequence begun with the Latin-1 digits
At a glance
- U+2079, Superscripts and Subscripts; Unicode 1.1 (1993); general category No, numeric value 9
- Bidirectional class EN; East Asian Width Neutral; line break class AL
- No HTML named entity and no Windows-1252 slot
- NFKC and NFKD replace it with U+0039
Historical Notes
Origins
There is no separate typographic history here. The character exists because Unicode had inherited three superscript digits from ISO 8859-1 and needed the other seven somewhere, and Superscripts and Subscripts is where they went.
Unicode
Unicode 1.1, released in 1993 — the same version as the Latin-1 three, which is worth stating because the split is often described as a matter of timing. It is not. Both groups arrived together; they were simply placed in different blocks, because one group had a codepage inheritance to preserve and the other did not.
The split
The property files record the consequence. This character is East Asian Width Neutral and line-break class AL; superscript one, two and three are Ambiguous and AI. So a string mixing them can measure and break differently across the join, quite apart from whether one font supplies all of them. Unicode also left U+2072 and U+2073 permanently unassigned rather than duplicating the Latin-1 pair, and annotates the gap.
Developer Notes
| Unicode Codepoint | |
| Decimal | |
| UTF-8 (hex) | |
| UTF-16 (hex) | |
| HEX Entity | |
| HTML Entity | |
| CSS (\xxxx) | |
| JavaScript | |
| Python |
How to Use Superscript Nine Superscript Digit Nine
To use the Superscript Nine Superscript Digit Nine symbol (⁹) in HTML, insert the
entity ⁹ directly into your markup. The decimal entity ⁹ works in any HTML-serialised document.
In CSS pseudo-elements use content: '\2079';.
In JavaScript and TypeScript the escape '\u2079' evaluates to ⁹. In Python source, write '\u2079'.
The character encodes to E2 81 B9 as UTF-8 bytes and 2079 as UTF-16 code units. Its decimal codepoint is 8313.
This is a text-based Unicode character. It will render in the current font on most platforms. If a font lacks this glyph, the browser may show a placeholder or fall back to a system font.
Things to know
- NFKC and NFKD turn it into a plain 9. A normalised 10⁹ becomes 109, which is a different number.
- No named HTML entity exists. Write ⁹ or ⁹.
- No Windows-1252 slot, so it does not survive the legacy pipelines that carry the Latin-1 superscripts.
- East Asian Width Neutral and line break class AL, unlike the three superscript digits in Latin-1 — mixing the two groups is not property-neutral.
- Font coverage for this block is worth testing rather than assuming; a face that ships the Latin-1 three does not necessarily ship the rest.
In the Wild
On 5 August 2026 English Wikipedia's article about the Superscripts and Subscripts block carried this character once, as a chart specimen.
The pages where a raised nine would be at home carried none: the encyclopaedia articles on the metre, the speed of light and the Avogadro constant, the BIPM's page on measurement units and NIST's units page. All loaded with full text, and all set their exponents with markup instead.
The comparison with its Latin-1 cousins is the useful part. Superscript two managed twenty-one occurrences the same day, seventeen of them on a single German article writing m² as a character. The characters in this block have neither that codepage history nor that habit behind them. Pages change; this is what those showed on the day.
FAQ
Why is ⁹ in a different block from ¹?
Because one, two and three were inherited from ISO 8859-1 and the remaining superscript digits were placed in Superscripts and Subscripts. Both groups arrived in Unicode 1.1.
Is there an HTML entity?
No named one. Use the numeric reference ⁹ or ⁹.
Will it survive normalisation?
Not under NFKC or NFKD, which replace it with an ordinary 9. NFC and NFD leave it alone.
Why do my superscript digits look mismatched?
Because they can come from two different blocks with different width and line-break properties, and often from different parts of a font.