CSS and Special Characters

Does anyone know if there is a way (CSS2 or 3) to apply CSS to special characters? For instance,


p { font: 10px Arial, sans-serif; }

<p> Here is some text for SomeCompany&trade; </p>


Doing this causes the trademark symbol to use the 10px sizing of the paragraph tag, where it should be smaller. I don't want to use span styles or classes around it if I can help it. This rule applies mostly to trademark, copyright, reserved, exponents, degrees, and other sub/superscript special characters.

Anyone have any insight?

I should add that I dont want to surround them with CSS'd <sup> or <sub> tags. I'm looking to see if there is pure CSS for special characters

Nope. <sup> and <sub> automatically use CSS declarations vertical-align: super & sub, respectively, which I believe is the intended way of displaying them; although I'm a bit hazy on this bit of typography.

Nope. <sup> and <sub> automatically use CSS declarations vertical-align: super & sub, respectively, which I believe is the intended way of displaying them; although I'm a bit hazy on this bit of typography.

Thanks, but what I meant is:


p { font-size: 10px; }

<p> This text is 10px tall for Company&trade; </p>


The "TM" will be 10px tall. My comment about the <sup> and <sub> tags meant I was not looking for:


<p> This text is 10px tall for Company<sup style="font-size:smaller">&trade;</sup> </p>


.. as that does nothing to alleviate the the problem. I was more hoping for a type of CSS designator that fits all special characters.

In my opinion there is no way to do it in css.

The css selectors can select an element, not part of the element's content, except some pseudo-elements such first:letter or ::selection (css3 (http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/CR-css3-selectors-20011113/#selectors)).
But they don't help in your case... :(

As you've seen, English is not my mother language. Please help me to improve it :)

At my opinionshould be In my opinion :)

But sup is already in superscript. It’s smaller. What’s the problem you’re having with that, because I see none?

You could use ems to make the text smaller. The size of the sup would change along with the font size dynamically.