I’m a big fan of small caps. They look great and they’re very useful as an alternative to bold or italic or all caps.
But most people have never seen real small caps. They’ve only seen the ersatz small caps that word processors and web browsers generate when small-cap formatting is used.
Trixie Argon, Ways to Be Wicked, in Conjuring for Beginners, at 137–39 (London, Quid Pro Books, 2004). | |
Trixie Argon, Ways to Be Wicked, in Conjuring for Beginners, at 137–39 (London, Quid Pro Books, 2004). |
Small-cap formatting works by scaling down regular caps. But compared to the other characters in the font, the fake small caps that result are too tall, and their vertical strokes are too light. The color and height of real small caps have been calibrated to blend well with the normal uppercase and lowercase letters.
Therefore, two rules for small caps:
Don’t click on the small-cap formatting box in your word processor. Ever. This option does not produce small caps. It produces inferior counterfeits. (Even when you’re using a font with real small caps.)
The rules for all caps also apply to small caps: use small caps sparingly, add letterspacing, and turn on kerning.
Now for the bad news. If you want real small caps, you’ll have to buy them—they’re not included with Times New Roman or any other system font.
Usually, small caps come in their own font file that shows up separately in the font menu. When you want small caps, you format the text with the small-cap font. You can also use paragraph and character styles to apply small caps and eliminate most of the tedium of using a separate font.
With small caps, it’s up to you whether to use regular capital letters at the beginning of capitalized words. For instance, a footer could read First Amended Complaint or first amended complaint. I prefer the latter.
Even if you get a small-cap font, the small-cap formatting box will still give you fake small caps. To avoid confusion, just forget the formatting box exists.
Many new fonts are sold in the OpenType format instead of the older TrueType format. Font designers prefer OpenType because it allows small caps to be built into the main font as an opentype feature. Unfortunately, neither Word nor WordPerfect supports small caps delivered this way. So most lawyers will be stuck with the traditional technique of using a separate small-cap font. If you buy a professional font family (like the ones shown in font recommendations), be sure to find out if you can get the small caps in a separate font file.