Understanding and Applying Small Caps

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Small caps are capital letterforms that usually approximate the height of the lowercase, but can be taller in certain fonts. They are a very useful feature for both text and display type. When used with small text, they are frequently applied as a lead-in to lengthy copy in magazines, book chapters, brochures, and other written materials. Small caps can also be used alongside full caps (this combination is referred to as cap and small cap), for title pages, book and magazine headers and footers, film and video titling, logos, letterheads, and many other applications.

In spite of their usefulness, small caps are a frequently overlooked, as well as misused, feature of typesetting. While many designers are aware of small caps and apply them to their work, they often don’t know the difference between true-drawn small caps and the fake, computer-generated variety that are considered a type crime by those in the know. What’s more, programs like InDesign can be misleading, offering fake small caps without warning.

Comparison of small caps in Adobe Caslon, Proxima Nova, and ITS Braganza

These three fonts contain true-drawn small caps. You can see their relation in height to the lowercase as indicated by the turquoise lowercase x at the end of the small cap line.

Excerpt from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz showing small caps

Small caps can be used as a companion to full caps, as seen in the title and byline in this example, as well as for a lead-in to text, shown below them.

Text written in all small caps

Sometimes the use of all small caps (below) is a better solution for an all-cap setting than full-sized caps (above), as their heavier, more open appearance can make them a more readable choice for small text. (Note that this example is set large to see the differences between them.)

True-Drawn vs. Fakers

So what’s the difference between the true small caps and the fakers? True-drawn small caps are designed by the typeface designer or foundry to match the weight, width, and spacing of the rest of the character set. They blend in beautifully without creating discord, or disturbing the overall color and texture of the type. On the other hand, computer-generated small caps are just reduced capital letterforms. They look too light compared with the rest of the typeface, and frequently too tight, too narrow, and not in proportion as well.

True small caps vs fake small caps

The difference between the true-drawn and the fake small caps is easy to see in these two examples: the fake, computer-generated ones are too light, and frequently too narrow and tightly spaced, while the true small caps blend in beautifully.

The only fonts you’ll find with true small caps built into their character complement are OpenType fonts. This is because OpenType can accommodate a very large number of glyphs. In contrast, the older Type 1 and TrueType font formats have a very limited character complement, and therefore do not have room to include many special characters. In some cases, separate fonts were created for these older formats to include small caps and other desirable glyphs, but most did not have them at all.

This does not mean that all OpenType fonts contain small caps. So you should check for them before purchasing a font and know how to find them in the fonts you already own. There are a couple of ways to do this. One way, in InDesign, Photoshop, or Illustrator, is to look in the Glyphs panel, where they often appear under the subset Small Capitals From Capitals. Another way is to look for them through the OpenType panel, described below for InDesign.

Locating & Applying Small Caps

There are a couple of ways to find real small caps in Adobe Creative Cloud software.

In InDesign, Photoshop, or Illustrator, look in the Glyphs panel where small caps often appear under the subset Small Capitals From Capitals.

InDesign Glyphs panel showing Small Capitals from Capitals

One way to see if there are true-drawn small caps in an OpenType font is via the Glyphs panel subset Small Capitals From Capitals.

In InDesign, you can also select a font, open the Character panel, and choose OpenType. Look to see if All Small Caps is unbracketed, which means they are available in that particular font. If they are bracketed, then true small caps are not available in that font.

InDesign Character panel showing Opentype panel

Both the Small Caps and the OpenType All Small Caps options are located in the Character Panel menu. Note that both do slightly different things, as noted in the article below.

Applying True Small Caps

Once you know that true small caps are included in a font, there are two ways to apply them. If you just want the lowercase characters converted to small caps and the full caps (if any) to remain as is, then select the text, and choose Small Caps from the Character panel menu.

If you want both caps and lowercase to be converted to small caps, then go to the panel menu and choose OpenType > All Small Caps.

Beware of Fake Small Caps

Don’t use the Small Cap option in a font that doesn’t have true-drawn small caps. If you do, you’ll get fake, computer-generated small caps that are just reduced capital letterforms. They will look too light, too tight, and often too narrow. This is considered a type crime, and it’s easily avoidable nowadays since so many OpenType fonts have true-draw small caps. Just know ahead of time if you need small caps for a project, and only select fonts that have them.

Another way to head off this problem is to change InDesign’s preferences so it doesn’t make fake small caps. In Advanced Type preferences, change the Small Cap value to 100%. Then if you apply small caps in a font that doesn’t have them, the result will look like all caps.

InDesign Preferences menu with small cap size indicated

Ilene Strizver is a noted typographic educator, author, designer and founder of The Type Studio in Westport, Connecticut. Her book, Type Rules! The designer’s guide to professional typography, is now in its 4th edition.
  • Mike Anitas says:

    Excellent article. I learned something about type and preferences… a big win!

  • Thanks, Ilene, for this good reminder of what small caps are and how and why to use them.

    Two additional points that I would make:

    1) There is rarely a good reason to use initial caps with small caps (“caps and small caps”). Most of the time, small caps by themselves will be more effective. Unless there is some reason to emphasize the initial caps (if they make a commonly used acronym, for instance), why capitalize the initial letters? (And it looks especially bad, as you’ve shown, when fake small caps are being generated.)

    2) When you’re deciding on the fonts to use for a job, and you want small caps, look at the content to see whether you’re going to need *italic* small caps. These are not traditionally part of many fonts, but they can be extremely useful. (It never fails, if you’ve spec’d small caps for subheads or for the opening line of a section of text, that you find that the subhead or opening line contains an emphasized word or a title that you would normally set in italics.)

  • Gordon says:

    Small typo: “They will look to light..”

  • ac says:

    should you keep the font size the same or make them larger when using small caps?

  • Christine says:

    Does InDesign CC not support small caps anymore? In the Glyphs panel there is no option to show small caps, and in the character panel, small caps is not on the list. If I select upper and lower case text and go for the title case under the type panel, it merely gives a capital first letter to every word (whether I had it as upper or lower case , leaving the rest lower case. I have tried using an OTF Helvetica which I would think have small caps

  • I have been known to lean over desks and frown severely when I see faux small caps (book titles make me especially twitchy), so I gave a small cheer as I was reading. :)

  • Nadia van 't Oosten says:

    I think something has changed in InDesign recently, because the filter “Small Capitals From Capitals” seems to be removed. I am using Corbel Bold for a document and this one has small caps: “All Small Caps” is unbracketed in the OpenType list in the character panel and the small caps are visible in the Glyphs panel when “Show Entire Font” is selected. I just can’t find a way to filter the small caps in the Glyphs panel.

    • Mike Rankin says:

      I think it must be something about that particular font because the filter Small Capitals from Capitals works in the Glyphs panel Show menu, at least in the fonts that I just looked at.

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