Design Nomenclature / Type

Small caps

Also called smcp, small capitals, petites capitales

This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.

Capitals drawn at roughly x-height, redrawn rather than reduced: proportionally wider, with stems thickened to match the lowercase's colour and spacing loosened to suit. Used for acronyms in running text, for subheads, and anywhere all-caps at full height would punch a hole in the page's colour.

The string 'NASA 1969' three times, each row on its own baseline with a dashed x-height rule across it. 'True small caps' is stood in with Georgia Bold at x-height and tracked out, noted as such — no smcp glyph is reachable from an SVG, and the stem match is the thing to show. 'Scaled capitals' is Georgia's capitals shrunk to x-height, which is the real thing a browser does and is visibly thinner and narrower than the row above. 'Full capitals' stands at cap height, well over the rule.

In practice

font-variant-caps: small-caps gets true small caps if the font has them and synthesises them if not, silently. font-synthesis-small-caps: none forces the failure into the open where you can see it.

Not to be confused with

How this term connects

BicameralBoumaCap heightFaux small capsLigatureOpenTypeTrackingTypographic hierarchyUnicameralSmall caps
Related Confused with