Subscript Generator

Subscript exists in Unicode because science demanded it: H₂O, CO₂ and CH₄ need their sunken digits in plain text, so the full run of subscript numbers ₀–₉ was encoded early and renders everywhere. The letters are another story. Unicode only ever encoded the handful that scientific and phonetic notation actually used — ₐ, ₑ, ₕ, ₖ, ₗ, ₘ, ₙ, ₒ, ₚ, ₛ, ₜ and ₓ — and stopped. There is no subscript b, c, d, f or g at all, and proposals to complete the set have been declined on the grounds that nobody's notation needs them.

That makes subscript the most honest incomplete alphabet on this site: twelve letters and ten digits, full stop. A subscript generator renders what exists and substitutes or passes through the rest — if your word looks patchy, you have hit the edge of what chemistry ever asked for.

Sunken characters carry their own set of conventions, distinct from superscript's footnotes and exponents. Chemistry owns the digits (the 2 in H₂O counts atoms). Mathematics uses subscripts for indices — x₁, x₂, xₙ — the numbering of sequence members and matrix entries. And phonetics uses subscript letters as modifiers, which is how the twelve letters earned encoding.

For styling purposes the effect is the inverse of superscript: where raised text reads as annotation, sunken text reads as machinery — variable names, chemical formulas, the technical underlayer. A bio in subscript digits (ₗᵢₖₑ ₜₕᵢₛ, within the alphabet's limits) borrows exactly that lab-notebook register.