text variable supercripts

Brand fonts?

Very well! Your customer controls the license of that font?

Ask your customer if you could do a new one-character font using the glyph shape of the REGISTERED SIGN from that brand font. A GREP style could apply this one-character font automatically to the REGISTERED SIGN. You could do this even with the free version of IndyFont.

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Hi Jonathan,

if you follow Joel's advice with a special font for the Registered mark, consider the IndyFont script by Jongware and Marc Autret: https://www.indiscripts.com/category/projects/IndyFont

Regards,
Uwe Laubender

( ACP )

Use 2 running head styles

1 to pick up the Paragraph -as you have done.

But instead make it a Character Style

So you apply the Character Style to the text up to the R mark

Then apply a different character style to the R mark

In the running heads - insert both Running Head text variables to capture both your Character Styles

And on the 2nd Running Head for the R mark - you can apply the Superscript

You can also then setup the Character Style to operate as a nested style in your original Paragraph Styles.

I find it surprising that it's hard to do this, honestly. I imagined that one could use a paragraph style or a GREP style to force superscript on the running header, but no such luck. One nasty hack method you could use would be to use a font for your running heads that had a reserved symbol that was already formatted in a way that you wouldn't need to apply superscript. For example, the ® in Minion and Myriad are both small and placed well above the x-height, so you could swap out the font you're currently using for the style for the running head for something else. 

Also, you could head over to indesign.uservoice.com and suggest that running heads respect character styles and GREP styles and so on. Or you could vote to support an already existing feature request - there is already at least one such suggestion. It happens to contain a link to a script that I think will allow you to apply the necessary superscript styling to your running heads. I haven't tried it myself, but it looks like it should work.