Small caps

True small caps (top), compared with scaled small caps (bottom), generated byOpenOffice.org Writer

Intypography,small caps(short forsmall capitals) arecharacterstypeset withglyphsthat resembleuppercaseletters but reduced in height and weight close to the surroundinglowercaseletters ortext figures.^[1]This is technically not a case-transformation, but a substitution of glyphs, although the effect is often approximated by case-transformation and scaling. Small caps are used in running text as a form of emphasis that is less dominant than all uppercase text, and as a method of emphasis or distinctiveness for text alongside or instead ofitalics,or whenboldfaceis inappropriate. For example, the text "Text in small caps" appears asText in small capsin small caps. Small caps can be used to draw attention to the opening phrase or line of a new section of text, or to provide an additional style in a dictionary entry where many parts must be typographically differentiated.

Well-designed small capitals are not simply scaled-down versions of normal capitals; they normally retain the same stroke weight as other letters and have a wideraspect ratiofor readability.

Typically, the height of a small capital glyph will be oneex,the same height as mostlowercasecharacters in the font. In fonts with relatively low x-height, however, small caps may be somewhat larger than this. For example, in some Tiro Typeworks fonts, small caps glyphs are 30% larger than x-height, and 70% the height of full capitals. To differentiate between these two alternatives, the x-height form is sometimes calledpetite caps,^[2]preserving the name "small caps" for the larger variant. OpenTypefonts can define both forms via the "small caps" and the "petite caps" features. When the support for the petite caps feature is absent from adesktop publishingprogram, x-height small caps are often substituted.

Manyword processorsandtext formattingsystems include an option to formattextin caps and small caps, which leaves uppercase letters as they are, but convertslowercaseletters to small caps. How this is implemented depends on the typesetting system; some can use true small caps glyphs that are included in modern professionaltypefaces;but less complexcomputer fontsdo not have small-caps glyphs, so the typesetting system simply reduces the uppercase letters by a fraction (often 1.5 to 2 points less than the base scale). However, this will make the characters look somewhat out of proportion. A work-around to simulate real small capitals is to use a bolder version of the small caps generated by such systems, to match well with the normalweightsof capitals and lowercase, especially when such small caps are extended about 5% or letter-spaced a half point or a point.

Uses[edit]

Small caps are often used in sections of text that are unremarkable and thus a run of uppercase capital letters might imply an emphasis that is not intended. For example, the style of some publications, likeThe New YorkerandThe Economist,is to use small caps foracronymsandinitialismslonger than three letters^[3]^[4]—thus "U.S." and "W.H.O." in normal caps but "nato"in small caps.

The initialismsad,ce,am,andpmare sometimes typeset in small caps.^{[citation needed]}

In printed plays small caps are used forstage directionsand the names of characters before their lines.^[5]

Some publications use small caps to indicate surnames. An elementary example isDonQuixotede La Mancha.In the 21st century, the practice is gaining traction in scientific publications.^{[citation needed]}

In many versions of theOld Testamentof theBible,the word "Lord"is set in small caps.^[6]Typically, an ordinary "Lord" corresponds to the use of the wordAdonaiin the original Hebrew, but the small caps "Lord"corresponds to the use ofYahwehin the original; in some versions the compound "LordGod"represents the Hebrew compoundAdonai Yahweh.

In zoological and botanical nomenclature, the small caps are occasionally used forgeneraand families.^[7]^[8]^[9]

Incomputational complexity theory,a sub-field ofcomputer science,the formal names of algorithmic problem, e.g. MᴀxSAT, are sometimes set in small caps.^[10]

Linguistsuse small caps to analyze themorphologyand tag (gloss) theparts of speechin a sentence; e.g.,

She

3SG.F.NOM

love-s

love-3SG.PRS.IND

you.

2

Linguists also use small caps to refer to the keywords inlexical setsfor particular languages or dialects; e.g. thefleeceandtrapvowels in English.

TheBluebookprescribes small caps for some titles and names in United States legal citations.^[11]The practice precedesWorld War I,withHarvard Law Reviewusing it while referring to itself. By 1915, small caps were used for all titles of journals and books.^[12]

In many books, mention of another part of the same book or mentions the work as a whole will be set in small caps. For example, articles inTheWorld Book Encyclopediarefer to the encyclopedia as a whole and to the encyclopedia's other articles in small caps, as in the "Insurance" article's direction, at one point, to "SeeNo-Fault Insurance","No-Fault Insurance "being another of the encyclopedia's articles.

History[edit]

Research by Margaret M. Smith concluded that the use of small caps was probably popularised byJohann Frobenin the early 16th century, who used them extensively from 1516.^[1]Froben may have been influenced byAldus Manutius,who used very small capitals with printingGreekand at the start of lines of italic, copying a style common in manuscripts at the time, and sometimes used these capitals to set headings in his printing; as a result these headings were in all caps, but in capitals from a smaller font than the body text type.^[1]The idea caught on in France, where small capitals were used bySimon de Colines,Robert EstienneandClaude Garamond.^[1]^[13]^[14]Johannes Philippus de Lignamineused small caps in the 1470s, but apparently was not copied at the time.^[1]^[15]^[13]

Small capitals are not found in all font designs, as traditionally in printing they were primarily used within thebody textof books and so are often not found in fonts that are not intended for this purpose, such assans-seriftypes which historically were not preferred for book printing.^[16]Fonts in Usereports thatGert Wunderlich's Maxima (1970), forTypoart,was "maybe the first sans serif to feature small caps and optionaloldstyle numeralsacross all weights. "^[17](Some caps-only typefaces intended for printing stationery, for instanceCopperplate GothicandBank Gothic,were intended to be used with smaller sizes serving as small capitals, and had no lower case as a result.^[18]^[19])

Italic small capitals were historically rarer than roman small caps. Some digital font families, sometimes digitisations of older metal type designs, still only have small caps in roman style and do not have small caps in bold or italic styles.^[20]^[21]This is again because small caps were normally only used inbody textand cutting bold and italic small caps was thought unnecessary. An isolated early appearance was in theEnschedétype foundry specimen of 1768, which featured a set cut byJoan Michaël Fleischman,^[22]^[23]and in 1837 Thomas Adams commented that in the United States "small capitals are in general only cast to roman fonts" but that "some founders in England cast italic small capitals to most, if not the whole of their fonts."^[24]^[a](Bold type did not appear until the nineteenth century.) In 1956,Hugh Williamson's textbookMethods of Book Designnoted that "one of the most conspicuous defects" of contemporary book faces was that they did not generally feature italic small capitals: "these would certainly be widely used if they were generally available".^[25]Exceptions available at the time were Linotype'sPilgrim,Jansonand their release ofMonotype Garamond,and from MonotypeRomulus.^[25]More have appeared in the digital period, such as inHoefler TextandFF Scala.^[20]^[26]^[27]

Computer support[edit]

Fonts[edit]

TheOpenTypefont standard provides support for transformations from normal letters to small caps by two feature tags,smcpandc2sc.^[28]A font may use the tagsmcpto indicate how to transform lower-case letters to small caps, and the tagc2scto indicate how to transform upper-case letters to small caps. OpenType provides support for transformations from normal letters to petite caps by two feature tags,pcapandc2pc.^[29]A font may use the tagpcapto indicate how to transform lower-case letters to petite caps, and the tagc2pcto indicate how to transform upper-case letters to petite caps.

Desktop publishingapplications, as well as web browsers, can use these features to display petite caps. However, only a few currently do so.^[30]LibreOffice can use thefontname:pcap=1method.

Word processors[edit]

Professional desktop publishing applications supporting genuine small caps include Quark XPress, and Adobe Creative Suite applications.^[31]

Most word processing applications, includingMicrosoft WordandPages,do not automatically substitute true small caps when working with OpenType fonts that include them, instead generating scaled ones. For these applications it is therefore easier to work with fonts that have true small caps as a completely separate style, similar to bold or italic. Few free and open-source fonts have this feature; an exception is Georg Duffner'sEB Garamond,in open beta.^[32]LibreOffice Writerstarted allowing true small caps for OpenType fonts since version 5.3, they can be enabled via a syntax used in the Font Name input box, including font name, a colon, feature tag, an equals sign and feature value, for example,EB Garamond 12:smcp=1,^[33]^[34]and version 6.2 added a dialog to switch.^[35]

Unicode[edit]

This section contains uncommonUnicodecharacters.Without properrendering support,you may seequestion marks, boxes, or other symbolsinstead of the intended characters.

Although small caps areallographsof their full size equivalents (and so not usually "semantically important" ), theUnicodestandard does define a number of "small capital" characters in theIPA extensions,Phonetic ExtensionsandLatin Extended-Dranges (0250–02AF, 1D00–1D7F, A720–A7FF). These characters are meant for use in phonetic representations. For example,ʀrepresents auvular trillin IPA, andɢavoiced uvular plosive.They should not normally be used in other contexts;^[b]rather, the basic character set should be used with suitable formatting controls as described in the preceding sections.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
inline	ᴀ	ʙ	ᴄ	ᴅ	ᴇ	ꜰ	ɢ	ʜ	ɪ	ᴊ	ᴋ	ʟ	ᴍ	ɴ	ᴏ	ᴘ	ꞯ	ʀ	ꜱ	ᴛ	ᴜ	ᴠ	ᴡ	–	ʏ	ᴢ
superscript		𐞄	–				𐞒	𐞖	ᶦ			ᶫ		ᶰ	–			𐞪	–		ᶸ	–	–	–	𐞲	–

Additionally, a few less-common Latin characters, severalGreekcharacters, and a singleCyrilliccharacter used in Latin-script notation (small capitalЛ:ᴫ), also have small capitals encoded:

Extended Latin
	Ꜳ	Æ	(Ƀ)	Ð	Ǝ	Ɠ	ᵷ (⅁)	Ɨ	Ʞ	Ł	Ɬ	(И)	Œ	Ɔ	Ȣ	(Я)	ɹ (ꓤ)			ꝵ	Ʉ	Ɯ	Ʒ
inline	–	ᴁ	ᴃ	ᴆ	ⱻ	ʛ	𝼂	ᵻ	𝼐	ᴌ	𝼄	ᴎ	ɶ	ᴐ	ᴕ	ᴙ	ᴚ	ʁ	ꭆ	ꝶ	ᵾ	ꟺ	ᴣ
superscript	𐞀					𐞔		ᶧ			𐞜		𐞣					ʶ

Greek^[c]
	Γ	Δ	Θ	Λ	Ξ	Π	Ρ	Σ	Φ	Ψ	Ω
inline	ᴦ	–	–	ᴧ	–	ᴨ	ᴩ	–	–	ᴪ	ꭥ

Labels[edit]

TheUnicode Consortiumhas a typographical convention of using small caps for its formal names for symbols, in running text. For example, the name ofU+0416ЖCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZHEis conventionally shown asCYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZHE.^[36]

CSS[edit]

Small caps can be specified in the web page presentation languageCSSusingfont-variant:small-caps.For example, theHTML

<spanstyle="font-variant: small-caps">Jane Doe</span>

<spanstyle="font-variant: small-caps">AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz</span>

renders as

Jane Doe

AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz.

Since CSS styles the text, and no actual case transformation is applied, readers are still able to copy the normally-capitalized plain text from the web page as rendered by a browser.

CSS3can specify OpenType small caps (given thesmcpfeature in the font replaces glyphs with proper small caps glyphs) by usingfont-variant-caps:small-caps,which is the recommended way, orfont-feature-settings:'smcp',which is the most widely used method As of May 2014^[update].If the font does not have small-cap glyphs, lowercase letters are displayed.

<spanstyle="font-variant-caps: small-caps">Jane Doe</span>

<spanstyle="font-feature-settings: 'smcp'">AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz</span>

renders as

Jane Doe

AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz

As of June 2023^[update],CSS3 can specify petite caps by usingfont-variant:petite-caps^[37]orfont-feature-settings:'pcap'.If the font does not have petite cap glyphs, lowercase letters are displayed.

Notes[edit]

^Spelling and capitalisation modernised.
^Text set using these characters suffers a number of deficiencies in comparison with text formatted using the basic character set. A number of characters have no "small capital"code points,including the standard English letterX,and the disparate applications intended for the various supported characters means they may appear differently⁠-⁠sized or -⁠styled, even within a single typeface. The use of these characters is furthermore disabling, as they are not generally intelligible to thescreen readersused by blind people; nor, typically, is text set using these characters recognised by general-purpose translation tools.
^Supported letters, plus those that cannot be substituted with Latin.

References[edit]

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