Service Mark SM

[marain]

Trade mark symbol (TM) achieved with ™ I'm seeking a similar method for portraying service mark symbol (SM). Rummaging through other sites I see two suggestions: ℠, and <sup>SM</sup>. I also see suggestions that the former does not work with certain browsers. The latter strikes me as usable, but inelegant. I solicit thoughts in this regard.

A.

[jscheuer1]

What you've been told is true.

The entity (℠) only works well in some browsers. IE 8 and less show an empty square. Others may show a ? or other placeholder symbol. Opera renders it, but it's virtually illegible. Chrome and IE 9 are good, Firefox probably is too, depending upon the OS and browser versions. Chrome might have a problem on older systems. I tried pasting in the literal character, same results.

So I guess you're stuck with <sup>SM</sup>, as inelegant as it appears. It can be styled to look a bit more presentable. Like with this in the stylesheet:

.servicemark {
	font: normal 65% sans-serif;
}

and this for the markup:

<sup class="servicemark">SM</sup>

Still a bit off in IE 7 and less. You could use conditional styles to tweak that. Or, those browsers are on the decline. Most folks have at least IE 8. It doesn't look horrible in IE 7 and less, so you might just let that slide.