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I've tried preparing my question in a Word document, inserting IPA characters as appropriate, but when I paste the text into the 'Ask Question' box, the text reverts to ordinary script. E.g., a superscript 'h' becomes a plain 'h'.

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  • use an online UTF IPA keyboard entry thingy (not MSWord). like ipa.typeit.org
    – Mitch
    Dec 15, 2014 at 14:20
  • 3
    You should really, really, really not use Word for plain text. Use Notepad. Do not use Word. Word is not for plain text, it's for rich text. Whatever that even is. The input textarea on Stack Exchange will not accept rich text. It expects plain text. Just like every input textarea on the entire Web, for that matter. So use Notepad for preparing it. Not just here, everywhere.
    – RegDwigнt
    Dec 15, 2014 at 15:23
  • Thank you. I ended up using Word after searching for "How to write IPA characters" on the Net. I'll go away and figure how to do it in Notepad.
    – David Garner
    Dec 15, 2014 at 16:32
  • @RegDwigнt Pretty sure vim and emacs work fine.
    – tchrist Mod
    Dec 15, 2014 at 19:17
  • Word is pretty much incompatible with everything. Avoid it if you want to paste your text into anything else.
    – Peter Shor
    Dec 24, 2014 at 14:12
  • Thank-you Peter, I get it now. Word is very good at what it's for, but not for this kind of thing. I'm up and running now.
    – David Garner
    Dec 26, 2014 at 9:31

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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The easiest way for me to enter IPA is use something like this IPA Keyboard and “type” the right characters there, then use your mouse to copy it from that bottom window to the entry widget on ELU. It’s nice because it handles all IPA, including arbitrary combining diacritics.

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You mean thish <sup>h</sup> ?

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It sounds like you were using Word's superscript formatting. There is actually a special unicode character for IPA superscript h: the "ʰ" character, so you may want to use that instead. This character should always appear superscript no matter how it is formatted.

You can find characters like this in the Windows Character Map if you are using Windows; most operating systems have an equivalent utility.

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  • I do not think that is a very good way. It is nearly impossible to find what you need when it is not laid out the way the IPA is laid out.
    – tchrist Mod
    Dec 15, 2014 at 14:45

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