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 | This template uses TemplateStyles: |
((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.
The template works for most scripts that have casing, with the exception of half of the Greek alphabet (namely the unaccented letters α β γ δ θ λ μ ρ σ (but not ς) φ χ ω). In addition, the accents in Greek ΐ ΰ are badly placed: ΐ ΰ.
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.
Smallcaps should not be used for the abbreviations BC, AD, BCE, CE, etc., per MOS:ERA, even though they are used in the examples below.
Usage
 | This template should not be used in citation templates such as Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2, because it includes markup that will pollute the COinS metadata they produce; see Wikipedia:COinS. |
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 and fonts, 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|((Smallcaps2|ı i))))may gives you ı ı, although the language is set to Turkish, unless the font including localized glyphs for small caps variant. - 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 class="smallcaps smallcaps-smaller">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
. - A potential alternative CSS approach,
font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;, has not been used because it forced transform all letters to be lowercase.
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: body .mw-parser-output span.smallcaps { font-variant: normal; }
If you wish to avoid the size change: body .mw-parser-output span.smallcaps-smaller { font-size: inherit; }
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))
|
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. |
((sc2|UNICEF)) and 312 ((sc2|BCE))
|
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 ???. Warning: 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))
|
UNICEF and 312 BCE MIXED CASE |
unicef and 312 bce mixed case (in many browsers) |
| ((Allcaps)) | ((caps)) | No conversion, all-caps display. The size of uppercase letters. Uses: ???. |
((caps|UNICEF)) and 312 ((caps|BCE))
|
UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case |
UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case |
| ((Nocaps)) | No conversion, all-lowercase display. The size of lowercase letters. Uses: ???. |
((nocaps|UNICEF)) and 312 ((nocaps|BCE))
|
UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case |
UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case |
TemplateData
TemplateData for Smallcaps2
No description.
| Parameter | Description | Type | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | no description | Unknown | optional |
See also
- ((Smallcaps))
- ((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