Template:Small-caps/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Small-caps.
It contains usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This template is used on approximately 759,000 pages, or roughly 17% of all pages.
To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

Shortcut: {{sc}}

This template uses a <span> element for formatting.
Block-based templates and paragraph breaks cannot be nested inside it.

See H:DIVSPAN for details.

Usage

This template simplifies formatting text in Small caps, where lowercase letters are replaced with smaller capital letters. {{sc}} may be used for shorthand; the broad usage of this template has made an abbreviated version convenient.

Example

{{small-caps|Small caps}}
{{sc|Small caps}}

Small caps

Misuse for capitalisation

The use of this template to simulate smaller capitalised text is semantically incorrect:

* {{small-caps|this is incorrect. grammatically, there should be capitals in this sentence.}}
* {{x-smaller|THIS IS CORRECT. IT IS CAPITALS, BUT IN A SMALLER FONT}}
* {{all small caps|This is also correct. It is the "small-caps" variant but the text is not all lowercase when copied.}}

this is incorrect. grammatically, there should be capitals in this sentence.
THIS IS CORRECT. IT IS CAPITALS, BUT IN A SMALLER FONT
This is also correct. It is the "small-caps" variant but the text is not all lowercase when copied.

While it may look similar, the first one has problems:

It copy-pastes as lowercase text, because the CSS only affects styling, not the content.
Viewers that do not handle the CSS used for small-caps (font-variant) will display the text as all lowercase.

The template {{all small caps}} can be used to request the special small-caps glyphs (generally slightly proportionally wider than simply making the font smaller) for all letters, uppercase or lowercase, without having the text copy-paste as lowercase.

{{big small-caps}} which produces big text Small-caps
{{Center Small Caps}}, {{csc}} which produces centered Small-caps
{{Font-variant normal}} to remove small caps in the middle of a span (for example in a template which produces a small-caps line)
{{sm}} which produces standard small text
{{Small-caps block}} to formats text block in Small caps.
{{All small caps}} or {{asc}}, which presents both upper and lower case as small-caps.

Format text as small-caps. See also {{All small caps}}.

Template parameters
This template prefers inline formatting of parameters.
Parameter		Description	Type	Status
1	`1`	The text to format as small caps	String	required