You probably already know that IT’S NOT A GOOD IDEA TO TYPE IN ALL CAPS IN INDESIGN!
This isn’t because people will think you’re yelling… no, I say it because you might want to change your mind later (which requires you to retype it). So instead, type in sentence-case or lower-case, and then — if you want it to appear in capital letters — apply the All Caps style. That’s the button in the Control panel that looks like TT.
Or, if you’re applying the style using a paragraph style or character style, you can set it in the style definition:
Then, later, it’s easy to change, right? Just remove the formatting.
HOWEVER, a funny thing sometimes happens when you apply ALL CAPS.
ALL CAPS vs. ALL CAPS
Nyoka H. recently pointed out a strange inconsistency when applying the All Caps styling to text. In the image below, the first line has been typed in ALL CAPS and the second line has been typed in lower-case and the All Caps styling applied to it:
Can you see the difference? The second line is longer!
Now, here’s the crazy part: In most fonts this doesn’t happen. But in a few fonts (notably many “Pro” fonts from Adobe), it does.
I reached out to font expert Thomas Phinney to ask why, and he explained that some OpenType fonts have two extra settings: “cap spacing” and “uppercase alternates.” There is no user-interface for turning these on or off in InDesign, but when you apply the All Caps styling (that TT button), they get activated!
Thomas explained: “Some OpenType fonts have a specific fontwide spacing adjustment programmed in for all-caps settings. Generally it is a bit looser. Often fairly subtly so, just a few units.” and “Some OpenType fonts adjust position (or even shape/size) of some glyphs in all-caps situations. Commonly this is used on hyphens and dashes, the Spanish inverted question mark, and a few others. Sometimes it affects numerals.”
For example, you can see how the punctuation changes in the following image (with some guides added to help):
So, here’s yet another reason to use the All Caps styling rather than typing in all caps: You can get added, bonus OpenType features to help make your text look even more awesome.
This article was last modified on June 1, 2021
This article was first published on October 22, 2017
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