Template:Smallcaps/doc

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{{Smallcaps}} will display the lowercase part of your text as a soft format of typographical small caps.
For example: {{Smallcaps|Beware of Dog}} → Beware of Dog.

This template should be avoided or used sparingly in articles, as the Manual of Style advises that small caps should be avoided and reduced to one of the other title cases or normal case, and that markup should be kept simple.

For display of acronyms/initialisms in small caps, use {{Smallcaps2}} (a.k.a. {{sc2}}) instead.

Usage

Your source text is not altered in the output, only the way it is displayed on the screen: a copy-paste of the text will give the small caps sections in their original form; similarly, an older or non-CSS browser will only display the original text on screen.

Code
{{Smallcaps|Utada}} Hikaru
Displayed
Utada Hikaru
Pasted
Utada Hikaru

This template is therefore intended for the use of caps as a typographic style, such as rendering family names in bibliographies in small caps to distinguish them from given names. It should not be used for acronyms or abbreviations which are supposed to be capitalized regardless of style. For such cases, use {{Smallcaps2}}.

As of February 2016, this template cannot be used in citation templates like {{Cite journal}} to small-cap the author names, or titles of works, in citations styles that call for such typography. See "Notes", below for details.

Technical notes

  • Diacritics (å, ç, é, ğ, ı, ñ, ø, ş, ü, etc.) are handled. However, because the job is performed by each reader's browser and fonts, inconsistencies in CSS implementations can lead to some browsers not converting certain rare diacritics.
  • Use of this template does not generate any automatic categorization. As with most templates, if the argument contains an = sign, the sign should be replaced with {{=}}, or the whole argument be prefixed with |1=. And for wikilinks, you need to use piping. There is a parsing problem with MediaWiki which causes unexpected behavior when a template with one style is used within a template with another style.
  • There is a problem with dotted and dotless I. {{Lang|tr|{{Smallcaps|ı i}}}} may gives you ı i, although the language is set to Turkish, unless the font including localized glyphs for small caps variant.
  • Do not use this inside Citation Style 1 or Citation Style 2 templates, or this template's markup will be included in the COinS metadata. This means that reference management software such as Zotero will have entries corrupted by the markup. For example, if {{smallcaps}} is used to format the surname of Bloggs, Joe in {{cite journal}}, then Zotero will store the name as <span style="font-variant:small-caps;">Bloggs</span>, Joe. This is incorrect metadata. If the article that you are editing uses a citation style that includes small caps, either format the citation manually (see examples below) or use a citation template that specifically includes small caps in its formatting, like {{Cite LSA}}.
  • This template will not affect the use of HTML character entities like &nbsp;.
  • Technically, the template is a wrapper for: font-variant: small-caps.
  • A potential alternative CSS approach, font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;, has not been used because it does not work at least in Internet Explorer 5 and 6, which are still fairly common browsers, and it is implemented inconsistently in others, such that it copy-pastes as the original text in Firefox, but as the altered text in Chrome, Safari, Opera, and text-only browsers.

Suppressing small caps

If you wish to suppress the display of small caps in your browser, as a logged-in user, you can make an edit to your common.css reading: 

span.smallcaps { font-variant: normal !important; }

Code examples

Code Display (screen)
Green tickY {{Smallcaps|The ''Name'' of the 2nd Game}} The Name of the 2nd Game
Green tickY Leonardo {{Smallcaps|DiCaprio}} (born 1974) Leonardo DiCaprio (born 1974)
Green tickY José {{Smallcaps|Álvarez de Toledo y Gonzaga}} José Álvarez de Toledo y Gonzaga
Green tickY {{Smallcaps|Nesbø, Vågen, Louÿs, Zúñiga, Kabaağaçlı}} Nesbø, Vågen, Louÿs, Zúñiga, Kabaağaçlı
When your text uses an = sign:
Red XN {{Smallcaps|You and Me = Us}} {{{1}}}
Green tickY {{Smallcaps|You and Me &#61; Us}} You and Me = Us
Green tickY {{Smallcaps|You and Me {{=}} Us}} You and Me = Us
Green tickY {{Smallcaps|1=You and Me = Us}} You and Me = Us
When your text uses a template:
Red XN in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's {{Green{{!}}Green}}}} forever Green}} forever
Green tickY in {{Smallcaps|1=Fiddler's {{Green|Green}}}} forever in Fiddler's Green forever
Green tickY in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's {{Green|Green}}}} forever in Fiddler's Green forever
Green tickY {{Green|1=in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's Green}} forever}} in Fiddler's Green forever
Green tickY {{Colors|green|yellow|3=in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's Green}} forever}} in Fiddler's Green forever
When your text uses a | pipe:
Red XN {{Smallcaps|Before|afteR}} Before
Red XN {{Smallcaps|1=Before{{!}}afteR}} afteR
Green tickY {{Smallcaps|Before&#124;afteR}} Before|afteR
When your text uses a link:
Red XN [[{{Smallcaps|Mao}} Zedong]] [[Mao Zedong]]
Green tickY [[Mao Zedong|{{Smallcaps|Mao}} Zedong]] Mao Zedong

Note that most of these uses are not sanctioned by the WP:Manual of Style and should be avoided in article prose.

Reasons to use small caps

Small caps are useful for encyclopedic and typographical uses including:

To lighten ALL-CAPS surnames mandated by citation styles such as Harvard

Note that this template should not be used inside CS1 or CS2 citation templates, such as {{cite book}} or {{citation}}; see #Notes above for details and alternatives.

  • Piccadilly has been compared to "a Parisian boulevard" (Dickens 1879).
  • Dickens, C., Jr (1879). "Piccadilly" in Dickens's Dictionary of London. London: C. Dickens.[1]
To disambiguate Western names and surnames at a glance
To disambiguate Eastern surnames and given names at a glance
Especially in Hong Kong and Macao, a Western given name may be added as well:
To cite Unicode character names correctly without unwanted emphasizing.
  • Such names are required to be written in capitals by the Unicode standard. Use {{Smallcaps2}}, not {{Smallcaps}}, for this: In running text, "U+022A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS AND MACRON" is a less visually distracting alternative to "U+022A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS AND MACRON". Unicode names should not be represented in mixed case, e.g. as {{Smallcaps}}.

Comparison of the case transformation templates

Template Shortcut Purpose Example Output Copy-pastes as
{{Smallcaps}} {{sc1}}
{{SC}} 		No conversion, small-caps display, mixed case.
No font size change (acronyms are unaffected).
Common mixed-case heading style (not in Wikipedia).
Uses: Rendering publication titles in citation styles that require them in small-caps. 		{{sc1|UNICEF}} and 312&nbsp;{{sc1|BCE}}

{{sc1|Mixed Case}}

UNICEF and 312 BCE

Mixed Case

UNICEF and 312 BCE
Mixed Case
{{Smallcaps2}} {{sc2}} No conversion, small-caps display, mixed case.
Slightly reduced font size.
This is the conventional display of smallcaps for acronyms/initialisms in modern book typography.
Other uses: Unicode character names (use {{Unichar}}). 		{{sc2|UNICEF}} and 312&nbsp;{{sc2|BCE}}

{{sc2|Mixed Case}}

UNICEF and 312 BCE

Mixed Case

UNICEF and 312 BCE
Mixed Case
{{Smallcaps all}} {{sc}} Lowercase conversion, small-caps display, all uppercase.
The size of lowercase letters.
Uses: Stressed syllables (in {{Respell}}); and ???.
Warning: Default use will permanently change UPPER- or Mixed-Case data,
does not work consistently across different browsers,
and is not compatible with named HTML character entities. 		{{sc|UNICEF}} and 312&nbsp;{{sc|BCE}}

{{sc|Mixed Case}}

UNICEF and 312 BCE
MIXED CASE 		unicef and 312 bce
mixed case
(in many browsers)
{{Allcaps}} {{caps}} Uppercase conversion, all-caps display.
The size of uppercase letters.
Uses: ???.
Warning: Will permanently change lower- or Mixed-Case data,
does not work consistently across different browsers,
and is not compatible with named HTML character entities. 		{{caps|UNICEF}} and 312&nbsp;{{caps|BCE}}

{{caps|Mixed Case}}

UNICEF and 312 BCE
Mixed Case 		UNICEF and 312 BCE
MIXED CASE
(in many browsers)
{{Nocaps}}   Lowercase conversion, all-lowercase display.
The size of lowercase letters.
Uses: ???.
Warning: Will permanently change UPPER- or Mixed-Case data,
and does not work consistently across different browsers. 		{{nocaps|UNICEF}} and 312&nbsp;{{nocaps|BCE}}

{{nocaps|Mixed Case}}

UNICEF and 312 BCE
Mixed Case 		unicef and 312 bce
mixed case
(in many browsers)

See also

Magic words that rewrite the output (copy-paste will get the text as displayed, not as entered):

  • {{lc:}} – lower case output of the full text
  • {{uc:}} – upper case output of the full text
  • {{lcfirst:}} – lower case output of the first character only
  • {{ucfirst:}} – upper case output of the first character only


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