If you want 2-dimensional typesetting in input, go ahead.
Some people find â^â a little quicker.
Did someone advise you to avoid using special formatting in Mathematica?
2-d typesetting can be a bit ambiguous at times. 2-d typesetting can contain formatting characters that do strange things. Characters like âInvisibleSpaceâ and âInvisibleCommaâ exist which wonât affect how the code looks, but change its behavior. As a rule of thumb, if youâre having trouble debugging typeset code, look at it un-typeset. Iâve seen plenty of code that doesnât work because of stray invisible characters that were inserted when someone used 2-d typesetting.
Many people use 2-d typesetting to make their code look more like math notation. Thatâs not always good - programming notation and math notation try to solve different problems. People who use 2-d typesetting also tend to use subscripts. Subscripts are actually pretty ambiguous and this almost always leads to code that doesnât work. You also tend to see a slew of greek letter and special characters instead of understandable variable names.
I use typesetting sparingly and recommend against it for new programmers. But thereâs nothing actually wrong with using âctrl6â instead of â^â.