Forcing superscripts to overlap with other text for a controllable amount of text

Question

Say I have something like:

First author,\textsuperscript{1,2,3} Second author,\textsuperscript{2,3} Third author, etc.

Is there a way to make the superscripts start in the same location where the comma separating the authors start? In the example above, for the first author, I would like the superscript 1 to be right on top of the first comma, while for the second author, I would like the superscript 2 to be right on top of the second comma.

Thanks

Answer 1

Using \kern -3pt is not very good, since you don't know the width of a comma. What about this?

First author\rlap{,}\textsuperscript{1,2,3}
Second author\rlap{,}\textsuperscript{2,3} Third author, etc.

Explanation: \rlap{whatever} sets whatever "to the right of the current position", but making it occupy zero width. (There is also \llap, and \clap in the mathtools package.)

Answer 2

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

First author,\kern-3pt\textsuperscript{1,2,3} Second 
author,\kern-3pt\textsuperscript{2,3} Third author, etc.

\end{document}

looks ugly to me ...