Talk:Small caps

Small caps on 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

moved from main page --DieBuche (talk) 08:51, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

Tombstones

Hand-lettered tombstones and coin designs are not typography, so I'm puzzled how one can say: "The text of a formal monumental inscription or the legend on a coin are often rendered in small caps" if there's no context in which these capitals can be declared small. They are simply "all caps". Hotlorp 14:05, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

I think that there is enough tontext on a coin or tombstone. If the first letters in sentences and proper nouns are larger capitalas than the rest of the capitals then you have small caps. Jeltz talk 15:09, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

non-small-cap font

As the article mentions, small-caps fonts have a different aspect ratio from "normal" fonts' capital letters. Technically, anyone could call anything a "non-small-caps" font, and just claim that it was designed to look funny; but it makes more sense, typographically speaking, IMHO, to call any font that looks like small caps a small-caps font. For example, on the Lincoln penny, the phrases "IN GOD WE TRUST" and "E PLURIBUS UNUM" are set in small caps; the phrase "ONE CENT" is definitely not. ("Liberty" and "United States of America" seem to me like they could go either way.) --Quuxplusone 06:09, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

small cap font

On my system, the following sentence is not shown with small capitals:

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.

Isn't it bad to use <small> tags? For example:

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.

That works fine. - TAKASUGI Shinji 03:51, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

An old version of this article had used <small>, but IMO the current version is better. It's correct, after all, and that's important in an encyclopedia. If you're not seeing small caps, then: (1) I think that's because you have an old browser; and (2) you should be seeing "Don QUIXOTE de La Mancha" (all caps, not small), which is a graceful degradation. I think the proportion of Wikipedia users who regularly use browsers that can display <small> but not <span style> is small enough that it's worth snubbing them in order to present a correct display to the users with up-to-date graphical browsers. (The Lynx users won't care either way.) --Quuxplusone 05:59, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to use

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

instead of

L<span style="font-variant:small-caps;text-transform:lowercase">ORD</span>

? It makes more sense that way. --Ampersand2006 ^{( & )} 18:00, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes Ampersand, in fact, your coding is the correct CSS coding in this case, and the other is a work-around to work with older browsers.HWSager (talk) 07:38, 29 July 2012 (UTC)HWSager

If you're not seeing small caps, then: (1) I think that's because you have an old browser; and (2) you should be seeing "Don QUIXOTE de La Mancha" (all caps, not small), which is a graceful degradation. --Quuxplusone 01:00, 27 November 2006 (UTC), quoting from Quuxplusone 05:59, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Image

User:Remember the dot asks: Why don't we remove the image and just write

An example of caps and small caps:

"This text is formatted in small caps," said Jane Doe, who is, incidentally, the mayor of Anytown, USA.

? (Firefox users will at this point be shielding their gaze from the ugliness of that font. See a screenshot here.)

The simple answer: That block of HTML doesn't tell anyone what small caps looks like. Instead, it tells people what their Web browser thinks small caps looks like. Which is a completely different kettle of fish. Also, of course, the HTML "example" will be blatantly lying to Lynx or pre-CSS Netscape users, who will not be seeing small caps at all. The benefits of using a real image are two in number: It is authoritative, and it is widely accessible. Browser-specific CSS tags do not have those advantages.

Hope this helps. --Quuxplusone 04:29, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Answer seems reasonable to me. By the way, the screenshot link seems to be broken. — DIV (128.250.204.118 07:39, 8 July 2007 (UTC))

From the German

From the German article, paraphrased:

In Anglo-Saxon typography the small capitals are roughly 10% larger than the minuscule.

OpenType has two features relating to small capitals: „Small Caps“ for the enlarged small capitals and „Petite Caps“ for the normal-size small capitals.

Presumably the "enlarged" and "normal-size" are written from the German point of view.
I suggest that this could be added. Also suggest that a Petite Caps article or section be added (even if only redirect?). — DIV (128.250.204.118 07:51, 8 July 2007 (UTC)) {Amended 128.250.204.118 08:02, 8 July 2007 (UTC)}

Authentic (digital) small caps

We read that most modern digital fonts do not have a small-caps case. The reader might be interested to read of exceptions. Well [cough] I for one would be interested to read of exceptions that are good and also [legally] either free or inexpensive. -- Hoary 23:23, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

I can't think of any that are notable for purposes of the encyclopedia article (although there may be such). We shouldn't be adding them in here as a practical aid for designers, since Wikipedia is not a directory or a guidebook. —Michael Z. 2007-07-14 15:27 Z

All caps is not small caps

The text of a formal monumental inscription or the legend on a coin are often rendered in small caps: "Sir Christopher Wren's tomb in St Paul's Cathedral reads, in Latin, simply SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE" (approximately meaning "If you are looking for his monument, look around" – referring to the cathedral itself, which he designed).

Here's a photo. An inscription in Roman square capitals is not in small capitals, even if it includes letters of various heights. Small caps are capitals which are the same size but of distinctive appearance from surrounding minuscule letters. As you can see by the last line which includes capital and small letters, these are plain capitals. —Michael Z. 2008-05-21 19:48 z

True small caps and unicode

There are two separate sections on this article, one describing "true" small caps the other unicode. Are these the same? If so, Super/subscript letters have the same issue of looking thin when not unicode. --Squidonius (talk) 04:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

True Small Caps

In traditional typesetting, which includes Mergenthaler Linotype and the early computerized typesetting systems like the RCA VideoComp that were intended to mimic and replace traditional systems, small cap letters were the same horizontal weight as either the capital letters (caps) or lowercase letters of the font, but reduced in height and proportionally slightly broader than caps of the reduced height.

I must agree modern typesetting methods that simply reduce the size (and weight) of caps to produce small caps look horrible to traditionalists. Especially when capital letters in reduced pointsize are glaringly lighter than lowercase letters. I was hired into the computerised typesetting department at Kingsport Press in 1969 (computer IBM 1130, output device Mergenthaler linecaster; 1970-1987 output device RCA (later III) VideoComp (Hell Digiset). Our in-house style manuals were written by compositors and proofreaders with 1923-1969 experience in traditional styles. Many Mergenthaler Linotype fonts (molds for casting molten metal) and the VideoComp VideoFonts (digital CRT stroking data) had a seperate font subset option for Small Caps and Old Style figures: small caps were (obviously) smaller in height than capital letters but were the same weight or thickness as the caps and lowercase. 1987 marked the switch over to Linotron 202 and later to Postscript, and most modern composition packages simple used caps reduced in pointsize. The difference is glaring to one used to details of typesetting. To produce patches (eg updated copyright pages for reprints) to match the style of the rest of the book, we often set the caps from the regular face of the font and the small caps from the bold face reduced pointsize and slightly broadened setwidth. Naaman Brown (talk) 14:01, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

"simply reduce the size" is not a modern typesetting method, but a bad one. Nearly all professional fonts have proper small caps. --DieBuche (talk) 10:16, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Missing Caps

It says that the only missing small caps are Q and X, but I've seen ǫ and x? --Gabo M.C. 200 (talk) 04:08, 26 June 2012 (UTC)

That's not a "q"; it's U+01EB ǫ LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH OGONEK. And that's not a small caps "x"; it's just lowercase which happens to look similar to petite caps version. -- Beland (talk) 15:20, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Don't all of the characters in that section just happen to look similar to petite caps versions? DenisMoskowitz (talk) 18:25, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Petite caps

The article on "petite caps" should be merged into this article on "small caps", since this (current) article gives plenty of relevant info on petite caps too, in fact, much better info than the "petite caps" article.HWSager (talk) 07:24, 29 July 2012 (UTC)HWSager

American road signs

I was about to add a comment that small caps are used on U.S. route marker "auxiliaries" designating direction, per the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices – see this – but, unless I'm missing something, the MUTCD doesn't outright state that capitals must be used, it just implies it through the examples. Is that still enough evidence? Mapsax (talk) 15:38, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

Much confusion between case and typography

The article contains much confusion between case transformation to uppercase and typographical rendering of a lowercase character with a small caps glyph. I have cleaned this up.  ‑‑ bs (2017‑Aug‑04 12:37)  —Preceding undated comment added 12:37, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Qꞯ

Why does the recently added letter Q’s small capital ꞯ seem to only exist to Japanese phonetic transcribers who refuse to use ː? 66.87.125.24 (talk) 12:02, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

The use of /Q/ in Japanese phonology is just what the Unicode Consortium decided to say as a rationale for adding the symbol for some odd reason. As far as I know phonologists usually use the full-fledged capital Q, as is the practice for other archiphonemes, rather than a small capital Q. The fact the small capital Q used to be the IPA letter for a voiced pharyngeal fricative (now written ⟨ʕ⟩) (see History of the IPA) would have been a way better reason. (It doesn't correspond to the length mark ⟨ː⟩, by the way, because the length mark represents the elongation of the segment it follows while /Q/ geminates the consonant it precedes.) Nardog (talk) 02:24, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

"ꞯ" listed at Redirects for discussion

A discussion is taking place to address the redirect ꞯ. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 September 11#ꞯ until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 11:23, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

False Information Removed

The Uses section says this:

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 "ɴᴀᴛᴏ" in small caps.

I was skeptical, so I did a search for NATO site:theatlantic.com. None of the articles in the top ten Google results used small caps. Same deal with the top ten results for NATO site:usatoday.com. They all use standard full-sized caps, writing U.S. and NATO the same.

I've removed the mention of both of these sites, and substituted in their place a mention of the New Yorker which I know for a fact does use small caps, for example here. It writes U.S. with normal caps, but ɴᴀᴛᴏ and other longer acronyms in small caps. This article proves that the cut-off is indeed after three letters, as they write W.H.O in normal caps. If anyone can find other examples of newspapers using small caps, please include them.

Duey (talk) 08:14, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Fake small caps formatting using Unicode hacks.

I've been thinking about this section and think on balance it should just be removed. Using fake small caps in a Unicode hack isn't OK for a lot of people and we shouldn't be encouraging it or giving a manual for people to use it:

• it produces text that's difficult for screen readers to process, so bad for accessibility for people with vision difficulties
• it produces text that can't be searched using find tools and other tools
• and it can't be run through an online translator like Google Translate either for people who don't speak English well to understand
• because it's a basic set of characters for technical uses, it doesn't support languages with accents
• and a lot of fonts don't have those characters, so if you copy text into another app you won't be able to read it
• and there's no easy way for people to understand why all this is happening if they encounter these problems
• the whole section is totally unsourced and debatable (which characters are close enough?) and has been the subject of a lot of arguments and conflict editing by IPs who don't have sources either.

In short, I think fake small caps formatting using Unicode hacks produces results that let down a lot of people, especially the people who have most trouble using computers to start with (blind people, people who don't speak English well) and having a totally unsourced Wikipedia manual to it isn't helping. So I've decided to remove it. Blythwood (talk) 05:57, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Cap smalls

Is there any opposite case to small caps? A variant of letters just like the capital Latin alpha - which appears in full height but with the minuscule shape

 הראש (talk) 01:21, 19 November 2023 (UTC)