In typography, small capitals (usually abbreviated small caps) are uppercase (capital) characters set at the same height as surrounding lowercase (small) letters or text figures. They are used in running text to prevent capitalized words from appearing too large on the page, and as a method of emphasis or distinctiveness for text alongside or instead of italics, or when boldface is inappropriate. For example, they can be used to draw attention to the opening phrase or line of a new section of text, or to provide an additional style in a dictionary entry where many parts must be typographically differentiated.

Typically, the height of a small capital will be one ex, the same height as most lowercase characters in the font; classically, small caps were very slightly taller than x-height.Fact: date=July 2007 Well-designed small capitals are not simply scaled-down versions of normal capitals; they normally retain the same stroke weight as other letters, and a wider aspect ratio to facilitate readability.

Many word processors and text formatting systems include an option to format text in caps and small caps; this leaves uppercase letters as they are but converts lowercase letters to small caps. How this is implemented depends on the typesetting system; some can use true small caps associated with a font, making text such as "Latvia joined sc: ATO on March 29, 2004" look proportional, but most modern digital fonts do not have a small-caps case, so the typesetting system simply reduces the uppercase letters by a fraction, making them look out of proportion. (Often,Fact: date=July 2007 in text, the next bolder version of the small caps generated by such systems will match well with the normal weights of capitals and lower case, especially when such small caps are extended about 5% or letterspaced a half point or a point.)

Uses of small caps

Small caps are often used for text that is all uppercase; this makes the run of capital letters seem less jarring to the reader. For example, the style of many American publications, including the Atlantic Monthly and USA Today, is to use small caps for acronyms and initialisms longer than three lettersFact: date=August 2007; thus: "U.S." and "FDR" in normal caps, but " " in small caps. The initialisms " ", " ", " ", and " " are often smallcapped as well.

Small caps are commonly used for showing keyboard shortcuts; for example, "The keyboard shortcut in Microsoft Word for small caps is ."

The capitalization of the name of the UNIX operating system was originally "Unix", but was typeset in early technical documents in small caps, until the all-caps typesetting stuck.

Perhaps the most common use of small capitals is in the rendering of the word " " in many versions of the Bible. Typically, an ordinary "Lord" corresponds to the use of the word Adonai in the original Hebrew, but the small caps " " corresponds to the use of Yahweh in the original; in some versions the compound "Lord " represents the Hebrew compound Adonai Yahweh.