Template:Smallcaps2

{{{1}}}

Template documentation[view] [edit] [history] [purge]

{{Smallcaps2}} will display the lowercase part of your text as a soft format of typographical small caps.
For example: {{smallcaps2|Beware of Dog}} → Beware of Dog.

This template should be avoided or used sparingly in articles, as the Manual of Style advises that small caps should be avoided and reduced to one of the other title cases or normal case and markup should be kept simple.

Usage

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

Your Text in 4004 {{Smallcaps2|BCE}}

Displayed

Your Text in 4004 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 {{Smallcaps}}.

Technical notes

• Diacritics (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 = sign, the sign should be replaced with {{=}}, or the whole argument be prefixed with |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. {{Lang|tr|{{Smallcaps|ı i}}}} gives you ı i, although the language is set to Turkish.
• Do not use this inside Citation Style 1 or Citation Style 2 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 {{smallcaps}} is used to format the surname of Bloggs, Joe in {{cite journal}}, then Zotero will store the name as <span style="font-variant:small-caps;">Bloggs</span>, Joe. 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 {{Cite LSA}}.
• This template will not affect the use of HTML character entities like  .
• Technically, the template is a wrapper for: <span style="font-variant: small-caps; font-size: smaller;""> ... </span>
• A potential alternative CSS approach, font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;, 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 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

Template	Shortcut	Purpose	Example	Output	Copy-pastes as
{{Smallcaps}}	{{sc1}} {{SC}}	No conversion, small-caps display, mixed case. No font size change (acronyms are unaffected). Common mixed-case heading style (not in Wikipedia). Uses: Rendering publication titles in citation styles that require them in small-caps.	{{sc1|UNICEF}} and 312 {{sc1|BCE}} {{sc1|Mixed Case}}	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case
{{Smallcaps2}}	{{sc2}}	No conversion, small-caps display, mixed case. Slightly reduced font size. This is the conventional display of smallcaps for acronyms/initialisms in modern book typography. Other uses: Unicode character names (use {{Unichar}}).	{{sc2|UNICEF}} and 312 {{sc2|BCE}} {{sc2|Mixed Case}}	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case
{{Smallcaps all}}	{{sc}}	Lowercase conversion, small-caps display, all uppercase. The size of lowercase letters. Uses: Stressed syllables (in {{Respell}}); and ???. : Default use will permanently change UPPER- or Mixed-Case data, does not work consistently across different browsers, and is not compatible with named HTML character entities.	{{sc|UNICEF}} and 312 {{sc|BCE}} {{sc|Mixed Case}}	UNICEF and 312 BCE MIXED CASE	unicef and 312 bce mixed case (in many browsers)
{{Allcaps}}	{{caps}}	Uppercase conversion, all-caps display. The size of uppercase letters. Uses: ???. : Will permanently change lower- or Mixed-Case data, does not work consistently across different browsers, and is not compatible with named HTML character entities.	{{caps|UNICEF}} and 312 {{caps|BCE}} {{caps|Mixed Case}}	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case	UNICEF and 312 BCE MIXED CASE (in many browsers)
{{Nocaps}}		Lowercase conversion, all-lowercase display. The size of lowercase letters. Uses: ???. : Will permanently change UPPER- or Mixed-Case data, and does not work consistently across different browsers.	{{nocaps|UNICEF}} and 312 {{nocaps|BCE}} {{nocaps|Mixed Case}}	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case	unicef and 312 bce mixed case (in many browsers)

See also

• {{Fixcaps}} – capitalizes or lowercases words (mostly used to repair paragraphs written by new editors in all-caps or all-lowercase {{fixcaps|pLAy/tHE/GamE}} → Play the Game
• {{Capitalization}} – banner-style template indicating an article needs capitalization cleanup
• {{R from other capitalisation}} – for categorizing WP:Redirects from titles to article (or other pages) where the redirect is just a different capitalization
• {{Template capitalization}} – ??
• Module:String2

Magic words that rewrite the output (copy-paste will get the text as displayed, not as entered):

• {{lc:}} – lower case output of the full text
• {{uc:}} – upper case output of the full text
• {{lcfirst:}} – lower case output of the first character only
• {{ucfirst:}} – upper case output of the first character only