this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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I suspect it’s an OCR error.
I'm guessing a typesetter was too lazy to add another textbox and although they knew how to type "√", didn't realize "²" is in Unicode too. They added a horizontal line as separate graphics to extend the square root symbol but only realized too late the whole thing is in a fraction: maybe someone reminded them and they misinterpreted the advice, or just decided not to split the text box to put the nominator higher.
Can you even do that "proper" square root with unicode? Or is it always just that single character?
Unicode isn't meant to replace all typesetting like LaTeX. For example, I can't make proper horizontal fractions (as opposed to slashed like ⅝ or ⁹⁄₁₆) that are normal in my part of the world because that would be too much scope creep. Even the TeX logo is not really doable (Markdown with ASCII: ^T^~E~^X^, Unicode ᵀᴇˣ).
An imperfect solution is adding
̅ U+0305 COMBINING OVERLINEabove everything. For example, it does not sit at consistent height (√4̅a̅c̅) and Windows renders it incorrectly (centered to the right edge of the character, not its center).This is how I'd render the numerator using Unicode only:
𝑏² ± √4̅𝑎̅𝑐̅
A correct Markdown interpreter can improve the look ogf the superscript:
𝑏^2^ ± √4̅𝑎̅𝑐̅
So they had to use something "fancier" like TeX so they must've known about suoerscriots and the like
Nope, it looks like a basic vector graphics editor, think Inkscape, PowerPoint or whatever is built into their animation/effects software. They just used straight horizontal lines for the fraction and the bar of the square root.
That makes about a million times more sense