A while ago I posted an answer to the MathJax tutorial meta question about the right way to write a degree symbol. The latest edit (with which I'm not really happy) discusses, among other things, the absence of a \degree
symbol in MathJax. But as far as I understand the docs, it should be fairly easy to provide a macro of that name for the whole site, with whatever implementation you consider most appropriate. Benefits:
- Would express intended meaning in the math markup, for the sake of editors.
- Might also emit that name to screen readers, I believe. Warrants testing.
- Does not depend on weird ways for entering ° on keyboards that don't support it.
- Implementation can pick whatever TeX notation renders best in a given MathJax version.
Currently suggested implementations include °
, ^\circ
and ^\text{o}
. Semantically I prefer the first, but I get the impression that I'm in a minority here, and with this definition my main concern about doing the semantically right thing in the post itself would still be addressed.
45^\circ
) as "45 degrees". I think less intelligent screen readers that don't catch this won't do any better with a\degree
command that unpacks to^\circ
, since apparently they try to read the underlying MathML, which will look like<msup><mn>45</mn><mo>∘<!-- ∘ --></mo></msup>
either way. $\endgroup$