Understanding and Applying Small Caps
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Small typo: “They will look to light..”
Thanks for the catch! Ilene
should you keep the font size the same or make them larger when using small caps?
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
That font does not have small caps, or it would show up in the Glyphs panel. Try Minion Pro OTF and you will see the small caps listed.
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. :)
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.
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.