Position of the registered sign

[Ivan Panchenko]

The registered sign (®, U+00AE) is already shown in superscript in some
typefaces and on the baseline in others. The discrepancy is annoying
because changing the typeface can cause it to appear either too small or
too large. In particular, I see that it is set without superscript
formatting in “Unicode®” on https://unicode.org/main.html even though the
Arial font shows it on the baseline, and simply concatenating the circle in
this fashion seems wrong to me (other opinions?).

How about standardizing the position? In the (non-normative) reference
glyph, the circle is on the baseline and I would accept that; while the
symbol is often used in superscript in body text (and also in subscript in
logos), the circled R is by itself an alternative to “Registered in U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office” or “Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.”. In principle,
I can also imagine it on the baseline in parentheses or on a new line in a
column heading. (The fact that the character ™ is displayed in superscript
may seem inconsistent, but for “TM” on the baseline, typing the individual
letters is sufficient, so there is not much point in encoding it as a
single character.)

A workaround is to use U+24C7 (Ⓡ) with superscript formatting, but many
fonts do not support it. It is also often drawn larger, I wonder whether
this is really necessary; remarkably, the HTML character reference name
circledS; is for the circled Latin capital letter S (Ⓢ, U+24C8), but the
name circledR; is for U+00AE rather than U+24C7.

There is also the (German) circled Wz (🄮), even though the symbol was
apparently just a Duden idiosyncrasy (and included in Verdana Ref for this
purpose) in the past. An informative note says “indicate a trademarked term
without making a legal claim of trademark status”; I doubt that this was
the reason not to use ® as it is not forbidden for a third person
(non-registrant) to use ® in an informative way. The actual reason might
have been that ® is American in origin and 🄮 is not about registration in
USPTO (though I would not interpret ® in Germany this way either).

Best regards
Ivan
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