Dear list, I may be under a misapprehension, but I expected the pdf output (created by C-c C-e l p) from the attached org file to show similar results for both lines. Instead, however, the simple x^2 outside of the verbatim environment puts the caret above the 2 even though I have set #+OPTIONS: ^:nil This seems to be because org-mode exports x^2 as x\^2 in the tex file. I think exporting it as x\^{}2 would give a better result. Is there another way to get the appearance I'm looking for without using the verbatim environment? Thanks for your advice, Paul PS. I'm using Emacs 24.2.1 with Org mode 8.0.2.