What Are Small Caps in Typography?
By Maya Chen, lettering designer and type educator · Checked by Jordan Hale · · How we review content
Small caps are capital letters drawn small. In a line such as “Chapter One”, set with small caps, you see a full-height capital C followed by capitals no taller than the lowercase x, so the whole phrase looks capitalised but never towers over the text around it. That quiet height is the reason they have been used in book design for centuries.
True small caps and fake small caps
A true small cap is its own drawn glyph. The designer made a capital A the height of the lowercase, then thickened its strokes and widened it slightly, so that it matches the density of the lowercase next to it. Professional fonts include these as an OpenType feature, switched on in design software and in CSS with font-variant-caps: small-caps.
A fake small cap is an ordinary capital scaled down by software. Scaling makes the strokes proportionally thinner and the letters look narrow, so they stand out as pale, spindly letters in the line. Browsers do this automatically when a font has no small caps and you set small-caps in CSS, which is why the effect varies from font to font.
Unicode small capital letters
Small caps in plain text is a different thing again. Unicode includes characters that look like small capitals, mostly added for phonetics, for example:
ᴀ ʙ ᴄ ᴅ ᴇ ꜰ ɢ ʜ ɪ ᴊ ᴋ ʟ ᴍ ɴ ᴏ ᴘ ʀ ꜱ ᴛ ᴜ ᴠ ᴡ ʏ ᴢ
These characters live in the IPA Extensions, Phonetic Extensions and Latin Extended-D blocks, which is why they exist for most letters but not all. There is a small capital Q (U+A7AF) but support in fonts is poor, so generators often use ǫ (o with ogonek) as a look-alike, and there is no widely supported small capital X at all, so a plain x is left in. A phrase typed in this style reads ꜱᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘꜱ. Our small caps generator converts text this way, and the how fancy text works guide explains why these borrowed characters are not the same as a font feature.
| OpenType small caps | Unicode small capital letters | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A font feature that swaps glyphs | Separate characters in the text |
| Works in plain text | No, needs a font that supports it | Yes, pasteable anywhere the font has the glyphs |
| Q and X | Included in good fonts | Q and X unsupported or substituted |
| Accessibility | Screen readers read the real letters | Often read as symbols or skipped |
| Best for | Print, web design, documents | Bios, captions, usernames, game names |
Small caps in type design and lettering
Small caps relate directly to proportions. They are drawn to the x-height of the font, or very slightly above it, so the shape of every capital has to be reworked to fit a lower, wider box. This is not the same as the cap height, which is the full height of regular capitals.
In hand lettering, small caps are a handy way to build contrast on a quote: a script word in large letters, then a supporting line in small caps with wide spacing. The pairing works because capitals read as formal and the small size keeps them from competing with the script. Use extra tracking on small caps. They are designed to be open, and letterspacing of 5 to 10% helps them stay clear. Letterspacing lowercase is a different matter, and designers generally avoid it.
Where small caps are useful
- Acronyms in running text: NASA, BBC and AM look louder than the text around them, and small caps pull them back to size.
- The opening words of a chapter or paragraph, after a drop cap.
- Names and labels on wedding menus, certificates and book covers.
- Headings in classic book design, where full caps would feel heavy.
Common confusions
- Small caps are not lowercase. They are capital shapes, and in text with the feature on, lowercase letters are the ones that get converted.
- Small caps are not superscript. Superscript letters, also available in the small text generator, are raised above the line; small caps sit on the baseline.
- There is no true Unicode small caps “x”. The plain x you see in generated text is simply a normal lowercase letter.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between small caps and all caps?
Can I use Unicode small capital letters instead of a font's small caps?
Why do faked small caps look wrong?
Where are small caps normally used?
Related terms
- What Is Cap Height?Cap height is the height of capital letters measured from the baseline to the top of a flat-topped capital such as H, E or I. It is one of the main metrics of a typeface and sets the proportions of all-capital lettering.
- What Is x-height?The x-height is the height of the lowercase letters that have no ascenders or descenders, such as x, a, e and o, measured from the baseline to the top of the letter. It is the main reason two fonts at the same size look bigger or smaller.
- What Is a Glyph in Fonts?A glyph is a specific visual shape stored in a font, such as one drawing of the letter a. A character is the abstract unit of text, and a code point is the number Unicode assigns to it; fonts map characters to glyphs.
- What Is a Ligature in Typography?A ligature is a single glyph that replaces two or more letters that would otherwise collide, such as fi, fl or ffi. Standard ligatures are applied automatically by the font; discretionary ones are decorative and optional.
- What Is a Diacritic?A diacritic is a mark added to a letter to change its sound, stress or meaning, such as the accent in é, the tilde in ñ or the umlaut in ü. In Unicode, many diacritics are combining characters that attach to the letter before them.
- Typography & Lettering GlossaryThe Typography & Lettering Glossary defines twenty terms that type designers and letterers use every day, from kerning and x-height to serif, ligature and blackletter. Each entry gives a precise definition, then shows what the idea means for hand lettering and for the styled Unicode text our generators produce.