Template:Smallcaps
<templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>{{{1}}}
Note to editors: Please don't categorize this template by editing it directly. Instead, place the category in its documentation page, in its "includeonly" section.
{{Smallcaps}}
will display the lowercase part of most text as a soft format of typographical <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/> small caps.
For example: {{Smallcaps|Beware of Dog}}
→ <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Beware of Dog.
Template removed
.
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 that 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.
For display of acronyms/initialisms in small caps, use {{Smallcaps2}}
(a.k.a. {{sc2}}
) instead.
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|Utada}} Hikaru
- Displayed
- <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Utada Hikaru
- Pasted
- Utada Hikaru
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 {{Smallcaps2}}.
As of February 2016,[update] this template cannot be used in citation templates like {{Cite journal}}
to small-cap author names or titles of works in citation styles that call for such typography. See "Notes", below for details.
Technical notes
- Diacritics (å, ç, é, ğ, ı, ñ, ø, ş, ü, etc.) are handled. However, because text formatting 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|{{Smallcaps|ı i}}}}
may gives you <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>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 style="font-variant:small-caps;">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
. - Technically, the template is a wrapper for:
font-variant: small-caps
. - A potential alternative CSS approach,
font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: lowercase;
, has not been used because it did not work in Internet Explorer 5 and 6, and it is implemented inconsistently in others: it copy-pastes as the original text in Firefox, but as the altered text in Chrome, Safari, Opera, and text-only 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-feature-settings: 'smcp' !important; }
Examples
Code | Display (screen) | |
---|---|---|
{{Smallcaps|The ''Name'' of the 2nd Game}} | <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>The Name of the 2nd Game | |
Leonardo {{Smallcaps|DiCaprio}} (born 1974) | Leonardo <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>DiCaprio (born 1974) | |
José {{Smallcaps|Álvarez de Toledo y Gonzaga}} | José <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Álvarez de Toledo y Gonzaga | |
{{Smallcaps|Nesbø, Vågen, Louÿs, Zúñiga, Kabaağaçlı}} | <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Nesbø, Vågen, Louÿs, Zúñiga, Kabaağaçlı | |
When your text uses an = sign: | ||
{{Smallcaps|You and Me = Us}} | <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>{{{1}}} | |
{{Smallcaps|You and Me = Us}} | <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>You and Me = Us | |
{{Smallcaps|You and Me {{=}} Us}} | <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>You and Me = Us | |
{{Smallcaps|1=You and Me = Us}} | <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>You and Me = Us | |
When your text uses a template: | ||
in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's {{Green{{!}}Green}}}} forever | Green}} forever | |
in {{Smallcaps|1=Fiddler's {{Green|Green}}}} forever | in <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Fiddler's Green forever | |
in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's {{Green|Green}}}} forever | in <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Fiddler's Green forever | |
{{Green|1=in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's Green}} forever}} | in <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Fiddler's Green forever | |
{{Colors|green|yellow|3=in {{Smallcaps|Fiddler's Green}} forever}} | in <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Fiddler's Green forever | |
When your text uses a | pipe: | ||
{{Smallcaps|Before|afteR}} | <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Before | |
{{Smallcaps|1=Before{{!}}afteR}} | afteR | |
{{Smallcaps|Before|afteR}} | <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Before|afteR | |
When your text uses a link: | ||
[[{{Smallcaps|Mao}} Zedong]] | [[<templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Mao Zedong]] | |
[[Mao Zedong|{{Smallcaps|Mao}} Zedong]] | <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Mao Zedong |
Note that most of these uses are not sanctioned by the WP:Manual of Style and should be avoided in article prose.
Reasons to use small caps
Small caps are useful for encyclopedic and typographical uses including:
- To lighten ALL-CAPS surnames mandated by citation styles such as Harvard
Note that this template should not be used inside CS1 or CS2 citation templates, such as {{cite book}} or {{citation}}; see #Notes above for details and alternatives.
- Piccadilly has been compared to "a Parisian boulevard" (<templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Dickens 1879).
- <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Dickens, C. Jr (1879). "Piccadilly" in Dickens's Dictionary of London. London: C. Dickens.[1]
- To disambiguate Western names and surnames at a glance
- Many Hispanic names are tricky to decompose:
- And many Hispanic names are better known by their second surname:
- Many names (Martín, Miguel, Ramón, Tomás, etc.) can be either forename or surname:
- Hungarian names natively use the surname-first order:
- To disambiguate Eastern surnames and given names at a glance
- Most Chinese names and Korean names retain their surname-first order:
- <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Mao Zedong fought <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Chiang Kai-shek
- The movie Oldboy by <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Park Chan-wook starring <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Choi Min-sik was not seen by <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Kim Il-sung
- Especially in Hong Kong and Macao, a Western given name may be added as well:
- Most Japanese names are reversed in the West, but not all:
- (Akira <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Kurosawa or Motojirō <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Kajii are usually westernized)
- But <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Matsuo Bashō, <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Ono no Komachi, <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Kaga no Chiyo (haiku poets known under their given name)
- But <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Edogawa Ranpo (kept due to wordplay with "Edgar Allan Poe") vs. Ranpo <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Edogawa (some modern uses)
- Burmese names ignore the concept of forename/surname, but are adapted in the West:
- Daw <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of General <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Aung San ("Daw" is honorific, her name takes part of his name)
- And some Burmese names are so short they need to retain an honorific prefix (U for Mister, Daw for Madam, Thakin for Master) which is confusable with a forename or a surname:
- U <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Nu ("Mister <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Nu"), a.k.a. Thakin <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Nu ("Master <templatestyles src="smallcaps/styles.css"/>Nu")
- To cite Unicode character names correctly without unwanted emphasizing.
- Such names are required to be written in capitals by the Unicode standard. Use {{Smallcaps2}}, not {{Smallcaps}}, for this: In running text, "U+022A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS AND MACRON" is a less visually distracting alternative to "U+022A LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH DIAERESIS AND MACRON". Unicode names should not be represented in mixed case, e.g. as {{Smallcaps}}.
Comparison of the case transformation templates
Templatedata
TemplateData for Smallcaps
{
"params": {
"1": {
"label": "Text",
"required": true,
"description": "Text to be rendered in small caps",
"type": "string"
}
},
"format": "inline",
"description": "Displays the lowercase part of inputted text as small caps"
}
See also
- {{Smallcaps2}}