4. To Cap or Not to Cap?

This is the fourth of a 10-part series of the Ten Keys to Seamless Typesetting.

If I were to ask you what laser or radar stands for, you might be surprised to find out that they are both acronyms. You can click on the words to find out for what.

As the English language evolves, some acronyms become ordinary words. Radar and laser are familiar examples. This does not mean that every abbreviation will, or should, make the same transition: follow the established spelling and the book’s agreed style.

During the “full cap” stage (with or without periods) setting words, particularly if they are long, in full caps can be somewhat of a typographical jolt to the reader. Most of the time they are not quite ready to make the transition to lowercase so we have to find a way of setting them accordingly especially if there are many acronyms within the manuscript.

The solution can be to use small caps. However, make sure the typeface includes genuine small-cap glyphs and that the software uses them. A small-caps command may use those glyphs or simulate them by shrinking full capitals, depending on the font and application. In the diagram below, NASA in the first paragraph has been reduced to 70% of the original capital height, making it lighter than the surrounding text.

The second paragraph has NASA set in true small caps designed for the font. Their proportions and stroke weight keep the colour more even than the reduced capitals in the first example.

The decision about which abbreviations take small caps should form part of the book’s agreed style. Bringhurst recommends small caps for many abbreviations in running text, with exceptions including personal initials and two-letter geographical abbreviations (The Elements of Typographic Style, version 3.0, §3.2.2). My usual preference is to keep country abbreviations in full caps, particularly to distinguish US from “us”. A different consistent treatment may suit a particular book.

I use small caps for abbreviations such as UNESCO, NASA, CNN, ISBN and BASIC, where the book’s style permits. In a vessel’s name such as USS Enterprise, the abbreviation USS can take small caps; the name Enterprise is italicised. Personal initials need separate treatment and should not automatically be converted.

A useful typographic approach is to pair small-cap abbreviations with old-style figures when the combination sits in running text. Examples such as ITV3 and BBC1 still need checking against the organisation’s name, the typeface and the book’s agreed style.

So, for a time such as 7 AM or a year such as 2018 CE, my preference with old-style figures is to use true small caps for the abbreviation. The choice of periods and capitalisation should follow the agreed style; lower-case “7 am” is another convention. Keep the space between the number and the abbreviation, and apply the chosen treatment consistently.

There are lots of different approaches to the use of small caps. The important point is that if you wish to use small caps in your text, make sure to choose a font that has true small caps built-in and then build a consistent typographic style.

Repeating the sign-off from the previous post in the series of Ten Keys to Seamless Typesetting – note how this blog post was written with no support for true small caps due to the web editor on this site so I have simply left the text as full caps with the exception of the image above.

If you have a manuscript that you wish to be typeset seamlessly using true small caps, then contact us for a no-obligation discussion by clicking here.

Looking forward to your comments below!​