Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 02/13/07 22:03

Scripsit Ben Gun:

> Since we're on the point, what do small caps signify? Why would
> anybody use small caps?

They have been used for centuries in print typography for purposes like
a) highlighting the first few words of text, for more or less ornamental
reasons
b) some types of headings
c) names of authors in bibliographies
d) emphasis in contexts where different kinds of emphasis (italics, bolding,
etc.) are needed.

The main reason for avoiding small caps in HTML is the implementation flaws
I mentioned: font-variant: small-caps does not result in real small caps but
in reduced-size uppercase letters. Typically,
<span style="font-variant:small-caps">Foobar</span>
gives (much) the same rendering as
F<small>OOBAR</small>
though with the latter, you can use CSS to affect the font size of <small>,
thereby creating a better contrast between uppercase and lowercase.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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