Superscripts before a letter in math
For a quick and dirty solution, try putting an empty group {}
before the ^
symbol.
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\[
^gp = {}^gR^l_l+{}^go_l
\]
\end{document}
For a better method, check out the mathtools package, which provides the \prescript
command.
In addition to the other solutions already presented, here is another one:
The (super-small) leftidx
package provides left and right super- and subscripts to be typeset by means of \leftidx
that is defined as follows:
\newcommand\leftidx[3]{%
{\vphantom{#2}}#1#2#3%
}
It therefore provides
\leftidx{<left indexes>}{<object>}{<right indexes>}
where <left indexes>
and <right indexes>
are similar in context to regular super and subscript usage. Here's an example:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{leftidx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/leftidx
\begin{document}
\[\leftidx{^g}{p}{} = \leftidx{^g}{R}{^l_l}+\leftidx{^g}{o}{_l}\]
\end{document}
The first solution suggested by @Ian Thompson may have some alignment issues (depending on what you actually have as super-/subscripts). But there again, a work-around is:
\begin{equation*}
{}^{14}_{6}\text{C}
\qquad \text{versus} \qquad
{}^{14}_{\phantom{1}6}\text{C}
\end{equation*}
NOTE: Example taken from The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e (page 70).