Template:Smallcaps/doc

Template:Template shortcut

{{Smallcaps}} will display the lowercase part of your text as a soft format of typographical w:small caps.
For example: {{smallcaps|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  

{{Smallcaps|Your Text in 4004 BC}}

Displayed

Your Text in 4004 BC

Pasted  

Your Text in 4004 BC

This template is therefore intended for the use of caps as a typographic style, such as rendering family names in bibliographies in small caps to distinguish them from given names. It should not be used for acronyms or abbreviations which are supposed to be capitalized regardless of style. For such cases, use {{Smallcaps all}}.

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 tr, although the language is set to Turkish.
• Do not use this inside citation templates, or this template's markup will be included in the w:COinS metadata. This means that reference management software such as Zotero will store 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 COinS metadata.

Code examples

	Code	Display (screen)
Template:Y	{{Smallcaps|The ''Name'' of the 2nd Game}}	The Name of the 2nd Game
Template:Y	Leonardo {{Smallcaps|DiCaprio}} (born 1974)	Leonardo DiCaprio (born 1974)
Template:Y	José {{Smallcaps|Álvarez de Toledo y Gonzaga}}	José Álvarez de Toledo y Gonzaga
Template:Y	{{Smallcaps|Nesbø, Vågen, Louÿs, Zúñiga, Kabaağaçlı}}	Nesbø, Vågen, Louÿs, Zúñiga, Kabaağaçlı
When your text uses an = sign:
Template:N	{{Smallcaps|You and Me = Us}}	{{{1}}}
Template:Y	{{Smallcaps|You and Me = Us}}	You and Me = Us
Template:Y	{{Smallcaps|You and Me {{=}} Us}}	You and Me = Us
Template:Y	{{Smallcaps|1=You and Me = Us}}	You and Me = Us
When your text uses a template:
Template:N	in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's {{Green{{!}}Green}}}} forever	Green}} forever
Template:Y	in {{Smallcaps|1=Fiddler's {{Green|Green}}}} forever	in Fiddler's Template:Green forever
Template:Y	in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's {{Green|Green}}}} forever	in Fiddler's Template:Green forever
Template:Y	{{Green|1=in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's Green}} forever}}	Template:Green
Template:Y	{{Colors|green|yellow|3=in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's Green}} forever}}	Template:Colors
When your text uses a | pipe:
Template:N	{{Smallcaps|Before|afteR}}	Before
Template:N	{{Smallcaps|1=Before{{!}}afteR}}	afteR
Template:Y	{{Smallcaps|Before|afteR}}	Before|afteR
When your text uses a link:
Template:N	[[{{Smallcaps|Mao}} Zedong]]	[[Mao Zedong]]
Template:Y	[[w:Mao Zedong|{{Smallcaps|Mao}} Zedong]]	Mao Zedong

Note that most of these uses are not sanctioned by the w:WP:Manual of Style and should be avoided in article prose.

Technical

Technically, the template merely wraps the standard:

<span style="font-variant:small-caps;"> ... </span>

(The "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.)

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; }

See also

Templates that change the display (copy-paste will get the original text):

• {{Allcaps}} – upper-case display
• {{Nocaps}} – lower-case display
• {{Smallcaps}} – small-caps display
• {{Smallcaps all}} – hard-formatted small-caps display
• {{Fixcaps}} – capitalizes words {{fixcaps|pLAy/tHE/GamE}} → Template:Fixcaps

Magic words that rewrite the output (copy-paste will get the text as displayed):

• {{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