Small caps

This article is about typography. For the stock market "small cap", see Market capitalization.

Small caps and italic used for emphasis

True small caps (top) compared with scaled small caps (bottom) generated by OpenOffice.org Writer.

In typography, small capitals (usually abbreviated small caps) are uppercase (capital) characters set at the same height and weight as surrounding lowercase (small) letters or text figures. They are used in running text to prevent capitalized words from appearing too large on the page, and as a method of emphasis or distinctiveness for text alongside or instead of italics, or when boldface is inappropriate. For example, TEXT IN CAPS appears as text in caps. They 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.

Typically, the height of a small capital will be one ex, the same height as most lowercase characters in the font; classically, small caps were very slightly taller than x-height.^{[citation needed]} Well-designed small capitals are not simply scaled-down versions of normal capitals; they normally retain the same stroke weight as other letters, and a wider aspect ratio to facilitate readability.

Many word processors and text formatting systems include an option to format text in caps and small caps; this leaves uppercase letters as they are, but converts lowercase letters to small caps. How this is implemented depends on the typesetting system; some can use true small caps associated with modern professional fonts, making text such as "Latvia joined Nato on March 29, 2004" look proportional, but less complex digital fonts do not have a small-caps case, so the typesetting system simply reduces the uppercase letters by a fraction, making them look out of proportion. A work-around to simulate real small capitals is to use a one-level bolder version of the small caps generated by such systems, to match well with the normal weights of capitals and lower case, especially when such small caps are extended about 5% or letterspaced a half point or a point.

Uses

Small caps are often used for text that is all uppercase; this makes the run of capital letters seem less jarring to the reader. For example, the style of many American publications, including the Atlantic Monthly and USA Today, is to use small caps for acronyms and initialisms longer than three letters^{[citation needed]}; thus: "U.S." in normal caps, but "nato" in small caps. The initialisms "ad", "bc", "am", and "pm" are often smallcapped as well.

Small caps are usually used in printed plays for the names of characters preceding their lines. Characters' names may also be printed in small caps in stage directions, particularly in older publications.

Small caps are commonly used for showing keyboard shortcuts; for example, "The keyboard shortcut in Microsoft Word for small caps is Ctrl+Shift+K."

The capitalization of the name of the UNIX operating system was originally "Unix", but was typeset in early technical documents in small caps, until the all-caps typesetting stuck.

Perhaps the most common use of small capitals is in the rendering of the word "LORD" in many versions of the Old Testament of the Bible. Typically, an ordinary "Lord" corresponds to the use of the word Adonai in the original Hebrew, but the small caps "LORD" corresponds to the use of Yahweh in the original; in some versions the compound "Lord GOD" represents the Hebrew compound Adonai Yahweh.

French and some British publications^{[citation needed]} use small caps to indicate the surname by which someone with a long formal name is to be designated in the rest of a written work. An elementary example is Don Quixote de La Mancha. Similarly, they are used for those languages in which the surname comes first, such as the romanization Mao Zedong.

Some publishers' house styles, such as those of Newsweek and DC Comics, use small caps to refer to the name of their own publications inside the same or another publication.

In chemical names, optical isomers are distinguished with d- and l-, when using the d/l system. For example d-glyceraldehyde.

In zoological and botanical nomenclature it is common use to print names of the family group in small caps.

The 2003 Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which specifies standards for road signs used in the United States, requires that cardinal directions (such as West) be displayed in small caps. This is thought to enhance readability.

The Bluebook, a format used in the citation of legal materials, makes use of small caps in various citation forms.

The character of Death in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels speaks only in small caps, without quotation marks.

Linguists use small caps to analyze the morphology and tag the parts of speech in a sentence; e.g.,
She          loves               you,    yeah yeah yeah
3.sg.subj 3.sg.pres.ind. 2.obj. interj.

In CSS

Small caps can be specified in CSS using "font-variant: small-caps;". For example, the HTML

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

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

renders as

Jane Doe.

AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz.

Since the CSS styles the text, readers are still able to copy the normally-capitalized plain text from the web page.

In Wikipedia

Small caps can be designated in a Wikipedia article by the template {{Smallcaps|Text to appear in Small Caps}}, e.g.:

Text to appear in Small Caps

In WordPress

There is a small caps plugin available for WordPress, the popular web publishing software. Utilizing a combination of regexp search/replace and CSS, the plugin converts capitalized words into small caps on the fly. It does this without updating or modifying the database.

Unicode

Although small caps are not usually "semantically important", the Unicode standard does define a number of "small capital" characters in the IPA extensions, Phonetic Extensions and Latin Extended-D ranges (0250–02AF, 1D00–1D7F, A720–A7FF). These characters, with official names such as latin letter small capital a, are meant for use in phonetic representations. For example, U+1D18 ᴘ latin letter small capital p (HTML: ᴘ) represents a semi-voiced bilabial plosive [1].

As of Unicode 5.1, the only characters missing to allow representation of the full Latin alphabet in small capital Unicode characters are small capital versions of Q and X. The following table collects the existing Unicode small capital characters:

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

ᴀ

ʙ

ᴄ

ᴅ

ᴇ

ꜰ

ɢ

ʜ

ɪ

ᴊ

ᴋ

ʟ

ᴍ

ɴ

ᴏ

ᴘ

-

ʀ

ꜱ

ᴛ

ᴜ

ᴠ

ᴡ

-

ʏ

ᴢ

Additionally, the Phonetic Extensions range has superscript "small capital" characters.

These "small capital" characters should not be confused with the Unicode Standard's typographical convention of using small caps for formal Unicode character names in running text. For example, the name of U+0416 Ж is conventionally shown as CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZHE.

Criticism

George Eliot's 1856 essay "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" is critical of Victorian novelists for using excessive small caps and for employing them in inappropriate contexts (such as using small caps in place of italics to indicate emphasis).

See also

• All caps
• Alphabet 26
• CamelCase
• Mixed case
• Petite caps

References

• Bringhurst, Robert (2004). The Elements of Typographic Style (version 3.0). Vancouver: Hartley & Marks. ISBN 0-88179-205-5.

External links

• A proposal for supplementary characters in Unicode: Medieval Nordic. Subrange 3: Small capitals at Medieval Unicode Font Initiative