What ₙ means
It labels an item attached to another symbol.
In aₙ, n identifies one term in a sequence; it is not a power by itself.
Subscript n has an older phonetic use: the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, a system for writing speech sounds in the Uralic language family, including Finnish and Hungarian, used ₙ before its formal standardization around 1902.
ₙ is a plain-text character, so its lowered form travels with the text; its exact appearance is font-dependent.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ₙ show as a box on some devices?
Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.
How to type ₙ
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 2099, then Alt+X to get ₙ.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “latin subscript small letter n”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 2099, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ₙCSS
\2099Character picker
To type subscript n, use your device’s character picker; if it accepts hexadecimal code points, enter U+2099.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ₙ
HTML hex
ₙ
CSS content
content: "\2099";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E2%82%99
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.