View source for Template:Smallcaps2/doc

{{Documentation subpage}}{{Template shortcut|Sc2}}
{{Uses TemplateStyles|Template:Smallcaps/styles.css}}
<!-- Please place categories where indicated at the bottom of this page and interwikis at Wikidata (see [[Wikipedia:Wikidata]]) -->
{{tlx|Smallcaps2}} will display the lowercase part of your text as a soft format of typographical {{Smallcaps2|[[small caps]]}}.<br />For example: {{tlx|smallcaps2|Beware of Dog}} → {{smallcaps|Beware of Dog}}.

This template should be avoided or used sparingly in articles, as the [[MOS:SMALLCAPS|Manual of Style advises]] that small caps should be avoided and reduced to one of the other title cases or normal case and [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Keep markup simple|markup should be kept simple]].

== Usage ==
{{COinS safe|n}}
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     : <code><nowiki>Your Text in 4004 {{Smallcaps2|BCE}}</nowiki></code>
; Displayed: Your Text in 4004 {{Smallcaps2|BCE}}
; Pasted   : Your Text in 4004 BCE

Because it reduces the font size so that the capital letters marked up with the template are smaller than those of the running text, and makes the lower-case content smaller still, this template should only be used for acronyms or other material which is supposed to be capitalized regardless of style (e.g. Unicode character names).  It is not intended for the use of small caps as a general typographic style, such as rendering family names in bibliographies in small caps to distinguish them from given names.  For such cases, use {{tl|Smallcaps}}.

==Technical notes==
{{Anchors|Technical|Notes}}
* [[Diacritic]]s (å, ç, é, ğ, ı, ñ, ø, ş, ü, etc.) are handled. However, because the job is performed by each reader's browser, 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 <code>=</code> sign, the sign should be replaced with {{[[Template:=|=]]}}, or the whole argument be prefixed with {{para|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]]. <code><nowiki>{{Lang|tr|{{</nowiki>Smallcaps|ı i}}}}</code> gives you {{Lang|tr|{{Smallcaps|ı i}}}}, although the language is set to Turkish.
* Do not use this inside {{cs1}} or {{cs2}} 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 {{tl|smallcaps}} is used to format the surname of ''Bloggs, Joe'' in {{tl|cite journal}}, then Zotero will store the name as <code><nowiki><span style="font-variant:small-caps;">Bloggs</span>, Joe</nowiki></code>. 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 {{tl|Cite LSA}}.
* This template will not affect the use of HTML character entities like <code>&amp;nbsp;</code>.
* Technically, the template is a wrapper for: <code><nowiki><span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: smaller;""> ... </span></nowiki></code>
* A potential alternative CSS approach, <code>font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;</code>, 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 [[Special:MyPage/common.css|your common.css]] reading:

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

If you wish to avoid the size change, too:

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

==Comparison of the case transformation templates==
{{anchor|Comparison of the small caps templates}}
{{Case templates table}}

==See also==
{{Case templates see also}}

<includeonly>{{#ifeq:{{SUBPAGENAME}}|sandbox | |
<!-- Categories below this line, please; interwikis at Wikidata -->
[[Category:Text-specific formatting and function templates]]
}}
</includeonly>