Etiquette for math subscripts and superscripts

Question

It is my first question here, I hope it is not too stupid...

I am writing my thesis in math and I need a lot of subscripts and superscripts. My problem arises since in subscripts and superscripts numbers and capital letters are too big to appear with a small letter.

For instance, I have to write things like $c_{1}$ or $q_{A*}$ (I know it is not that nice having both A and \*, but the function is called $q_{A}$ and the operation _{*} has a precise meaning). And it is not that nice.

Then I started using \scriptscriptstyle when I have capital letters or numbers (for instance c_{{\scriptscriptstyle 1}}. And finally I noticed that several times I have to subscribe things like _{2g} or _{k+1} and there numbers come back to their original size.

Hence I was wondering whether there is a standard way or etiquette to deal with this issue (since now I feel either I go back to standard style or I start writing things like u_{{\scriptscriptstyle 2}g}...)

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt,oneside,openright]{book} 
\usepackage{amsthm}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath,amscd}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{latexsym}
\begin{document}
$Hom_{0}(X)$ or $Hom_{\scriptscriptstyle 0}(X)$?
But then I have also $Hom_{2g-1}(X)$...
Then also $c_{1}$ or $c_{\scriptscriptstyle 1}$ 
Mixed things like $k^{2g-2p+s}$ or $(u_{{\scriptscriptstyle 1}},\ldots,u_{g}, \tilde{u}_{{\scriptscriptstyle 1}}=u_{g+1}, \ldots , \tilde{u}_{g}=u_{2g})$
Also $\omega_{E}$ is quite annoying.
\end{document}     

Answer 1

You should follow the standard. The size changes were chosen by Knuth and later people to conform to printing standards, and look nice in general.

When I give advice to the PhD students here, I generally tell them to avoid indexes as far as possible. We generally point to Nicolas Higham's "Mathematical writing" for advice.