Template talk:Earth mass

character variants

compare:

M_🜨:M_☉ [Earth symbol]

M_⨁:M_☉ [n-ary circled plus operator]

M_⊕:M_☉ [circled plus]

M_♁:M_☉ [globus cruciger]

--dab (𒁳) 07:59, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

AFAICT no-one uses the last. The circled plus has a white rim, which is incorrect. (At least in a decent font, though some are sloppy. Unicode even has a mechanism for force the white rim.) According to Unicode, the n-ary symbol is even worse. So that leaves the first, a proper Earth symbol, M_🜨. Problem is, in some Mac fonts it's already subscript, so subscripting it makes it illegible. And apparently a number of readers still don't have font support. Though that can be fixed.

But there are other choices. M_E is supposedly another convention, though I've never seen it. Perhaps best just to spell it out, M_Earth. — kwami (talk) 20:57, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

The first symbol doesn't render correctly on an iPad for some reason; it looks like "M_䷀" (which, ironically, is the Yijing hexagram for "Heaven" and not "Earth" (䷁)). The second option looks too big compared with the "Sun" symbol. The third one is the only one of those three that is the same size as the "Sun" symbol and renders correctly on the tested iPad (and also happens to be used in the first paragraph of "Earth mass" instead of this template). I'd use the third one for compatibility since it has much wider font support (or figure out why the first one doesn't render correctly). —Cousteau (talk) 21:13, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

BTW, I believe WP has started providing web fonts so that articles and symbols are displayed for those who don't have font support. But I don't know anything about that or where we'd go to get the Earth symbol added. — kwami (talk) 02:34, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Font support for the obscure Unicode symbol is patchy at best, so I'm reverting to the previous pending a better solution. We still have the option of a subscripted symbol though, which might be better than the word? Lithopsian (talk) 20:57, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

the subscripted symbol would either be english 'E' or international '🜨'. — kwami (talk) 23:27, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I still see tofu. Mass-editing articles to display gibberish seems a little premature. Lithopsian (talk) 14:35, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

i've requested web-font support at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), but am told that it's not likely to be accepted

back when mac fonts displayed 🜨 wrong, there was a real problem, but if it's simply a matter of not having adequate font support, that's on the reader -- same as if your browser doesn't display cyrillic or hebrew or anything else

btw, i also use linux; that's not the issue — kwami (talk) 21:22, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

I'm getting lots of thanks from people for setting symbol = yes — kwami (talk) 20:32, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

I went through a bunch of the transclusions, and they are are still set to sym=y, so I've made that the default [as Earth radius has been for years]. — kwami (talk) 06:30, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Inconsistent template format

The use of a name for the subscript is inconsistent with how it is presented for radius. E.g. M_🜨 vs. R_🜨. It should appear as M_🜨 as is the convention for astronomy. Praemonitus (talk) 16:10, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it should. But evidently people have difficulty displaying the standard convention. — kwami (talk) 23:28, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

They do? Yet the {{val}} template displays it properly: M_🜨. Praemonitus (talk) 15:00, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Not here, on a fairly lightweight but modern Linux desktop. It can be made to display by the installation of more fonts, but certainly not everyone will see this as intended. Lithopsian (talk) 18:59, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Ah, a fonts issue. Now I understand. Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 21:19, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Now fixed. Haven't had any complaints (per previous thread). — kwami (talk) 06:31, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Unit style

Please make the unit non-cursive. It should be non-cursive as per the SI-style guide (even thought it is not SI itself). Quintofin (talk) 23:21, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Someone just did that for solar mass, and for the same reason, but then reverted themselves. If you think mass, radius, luminosity etc. should be in roman typeface, that's a broader discussion. — kwami (talk) 06:33, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

That is fair, also in the meantime I am not sure anymore if it should be. I looked up various definitions and it turns out both can be used, however, the IAU defined things like the Earth and Solar mass to be cursive as they deem them constants. Quintofin (talk) 18:48, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, there may be a difference between the mass of the Earth m_🜨 or M_🜨 when calculating forces in Earth's gravity well, and measuring other bodies in Earth-masses M_🜨. — kwami (talk) 20:37, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Just to clarify terminology to avoid potential confusion: in some languages "cursive" means the same thing as italics in English. E.g. German: de:Kursivschrift. Courtesy ping: Beland. —⁠andrybak (talk) 20:35, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the clarification! Actual cursive is also sometimes used, e.g. "ℓ" is a thing which might be distinct from the italic "l".

I did not have the SI style guide in mind when I changed {{solar mass}}, and indeed I did not intend to change it from italics at all. I changed it from <var>...</var> to ''...'' markup because in general wiki markup is preferred to HTML tags, and the latter are often used in a semantically incorrect fashion. In this case, on second look I think the tag is actually being used semantically correctly. Andrybak is the editor who reverted that switch, noting that the ''...'' markup causes problems for articles that already have italic markup. That revert seems fine, though now thinking about it, usually the way to indicate italics-within-italics is with roman text, and that's what I expect having the ''...'' markup in the template to do?

Because this is a math variable (rather than a computer variable), the conversion chart at Category:Articles with HTML markup would suggest using {{mvar}}, which would produce M_🜨 or M_🜨 - in a serif font. That is intended to match any <math>...</math> markup on the same page, which is always serif. Though technically, this is a constant and not a variable, and perhaps that makes a difference? We would normally use {{math}} to get serif, non-italic math-related text if that is desirable.

It looks like we can't decide between serif and sans serif in the template itself. There are lots of articles on individual stars that use {{solar mass}} in the infobox, where everything is sans serif. Having some be serif would be weird, and changing everything would be a major change. But there are articles like Gravitational constant where M_☉ is used both in prose and in LaTeX-rendered equations. I think in that case the right solution is to wrap the {{solar mass}} in {{math}} in articles where it needs to appear consistently serif.

Normally for deciding something like italics vs. roman we'd look to see if reliable sources always do it one way or another. Because there is a weird symbol in this notation, attempting the usual Google Scholar and Google Books and Duck Duck Go searches did not work for me. I have no strong feelings on this attribute and I defer to subject-matter experts. If no one is any longer advocating a change of this attribute, just leaving this the way it has been for many years seems fine. -- Beland (talk) 22:16, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

I just realized wrapping {{solar mass}} with {{math}} doesn't work for {{solar mass|first=yes}}; we could also add a new "serif" parameter or something to cope with that. -- Beland (talk) 22:24, 24 April 2026 (UTC)