There are Unicode characters for a few fractions, such as ½. This looks a little better than 1/2, depending on the context.
Here’s the Taylor series for log(1 + x) written in pure HTML:
log(1 + x) = x – ½x² + ⅓x³ – ¼x⁴ + ⅕x⁵ – ⋯
See this post for how the exponents were made.
Notice that the three dots ⋯ on the end are centered vertically, like \cdots in LaTeX. This was done with ⋯ (U+22EF).
Available fractions
The selection of available fraction number forms is small and a little strange.
There are characters for fractions with denominator d equal to 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8, with numerators 1 through d-1, except for fractions that can be reduced.
If d = 7, 9, or 10, there’s a character for 1/d but not for fractions with numerators other than 1. For example, there is a character for ⅐ but not for 2/7.
HTML Entities
For denominators 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 the HTML entity for characters is easy: they all have the form
& frac <n> <d> ;
where n is the numerator and d is the denominator. For example, ⅗ is the HTML entity for ⅗.
There are no HTML entities for 1/7, 1/9, or 1/10.
There is a Unicode combining character U+2044 FRACTION SLASH which can be used to compose arbitrary fractions. However, support for rendering these fractions as ligatures may vary. Primarily, this depends on ligature support by the font, as each font must declare how glyphs may be combined.
Examples:
⁷⁄₁₃
⅐
⁹⁄₉