Your key­board in­cludes a trade­mark sym­bol (™), a reg­is­tered trade­mark sym­bol (®), and a copy­right sym­bol (©).

When you need these sym­bols, use them. Don’t use goofy al­pha­betic ap­prox­i­ma­tions like (TM) or (c)—an­other type­writer habit.

Trade­mark sym­bols are set as su­per­scripts—smaller char­ac­ters po­si­tioned above the base­line of the text (Roxy’s Tacos™, Car­ing Is Our Busi­ness®). If you use proper trade­mark sym­bols, they’ll ap­pear at the right size and height. No space is needed be­tween the text and the trade­mark symbol.

Copy­right sym­bols ap­pear in line with the text (© 1999). Use a non­break­ing space be­tween the copy­right sym­bol and the year to en­sure the two don’t end up on dif­fer­ent lines or pages.

Must you put a word space af­ter the copy­right sym­bol? No, but it makes good sense se­man­ti­cally. The © di­rectly re­places the word copy­right, so it should be spaced like any other word. Trade­mark sym­bols, on the other hand, are more like lit­tle bar­na­cles of legalese—im­mov­able but mostly ig­nored. To think of it an­other way, if you were read­ing aloud the phrase “© 2024 Mega­Corp™”, you’d likely pro­nounce the © but not the ™.