Small Caps Generator (ꜱᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘɪᴛᴀʟꜱ in Unicode to copy and paste)

Understanding the small caps generator — concept and principle

Small capitals are capital letter shapes drawn at about the height of small letters, a classic typographic style for names and headings. Plain-text fields cannot use the font feature, so this generator replaces small letters with Unicode's small-capital characters, keeping your capitals full size by default for the classic look.

How it is calculated

Each small letter a–z → its Unicode LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL: ᴀ (U+1D00), ʙ (U+0299), ᴄ (U+1D04) and so on

ꜰ (U+A730), ꜱ (U+A731) and ꞯ (U+A7AF) come from Latin Extended-D

There is no small capital X, so x stays as typed

Option: keep typed capitals full size, or convert them to small capitals too

Digits, accented letters, Hangul and punctuation stay as typed

The principle

Most small-capital characters were added to Unicode for phonetic alphabets, such as the International Phonetic Alphabet and the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, where they represent particular sounds. Later additions filled gaps for F, S and Q. Because they are separate characters, their look survives copy and paste. Unicode encoded no small capital X, so that one letter cannot be converted. Unlike the mathematical styled letters, most of these characters are in the Basic Multilingual Plane, so they count as one UTF-16 unit each.

Worked example

Default inputs: "Hello from Seoul", keep capitals full size.

1. H and S are capitals and stay full size.
2. Each small letter becomes a small capital: e → ᴇ, l → ʟ, o → ᴏ, f → ꜰ, r → ʀ, m → ᴍ, u → ᴜ.
3. Result: Hᴇʟʟᴏ ꜰʀᴏᴍ Sᴇᴏᴜʟ.
4. Letters converted = 12; letters with no small-capital form (x) = 0.
5. UTF-16 length = 16, the same as the original, because all these characters are in the Basic Multilingual Plane.

How to read the result

Small caps give names, acronyms and headings an elegant look. Because some of these characters come from different Unicode blocks, they may differ slightly in size or weight in some fonts. Screen readers may read them as phonetic symbols, so avoid them for essential text.

Common mistakes

• Expecting x to convert; Unicode has no small capital X.
• Converting long passages, which reduces readability.
• Assuming all fonts display ꞯ (small capital Q), a relatively recent addition.

Frequently asked questions

Why isn't my x converted?

Unicode has no small capital X.

Do small caps take more characters?

No. Most are single UTF-16 units, so the length stays the same.

What is the classic small-caps look?

Full-size capitals at the start of names with the rest in small capitals.

Can I convert Korean?

No. Hangul has no small-capital forms.

Sources: The Unicode Standard 15.1, Unicode Character Database: LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL characters in IPA Extensions, Phonetic Extensions (U+1D00–U+1D22) and Latin Extended-D (U+A730, U+A731, U+A7AF)