smcp

smcp stands for Small Capitals, a feature in OpenType fonts that enables the use of small capital glyphs in place of standard lowercase letters. When a font includes true small capitals, applying the smcp feature renders lowercase letters as smaller uppercase forms that align with the font’s x-height, producing a distinctive, refined texture in running text, headings, or emphasized phrases.

In practice, smcp works as a glyph substitution: the text engine replaces lowercase characters with the font’s small capital glyphs. If a font does not provide true small capitals, engines may attempt a fallback by scaling uppercase glyphs or may omit the effect. Some fonts also support related features such as c2sc (case-to-small-caps) or petite capitals, which offer alternative capitalization styles. The concept arises from historical typography, where small capitals provided a readable compromise between lowercase text and full uppercase emphasis.

Implementation and usage: in OpenType-aware environments, you can enable small capitals via CSS with font-feature-settings: "smcp" on or by using font-variant-caps (e.g., small-caps or all-small-caps) depending on browser support. In professional typesetting tools, there are dedicated controls to apply small capitals to selected text. True small capitals aim to match the typeface’s weight and proportions; faux small caps, created by scaling uppercase glyphs, may differ in stroke width and alignment.

See also: small capitals, OpenType, font feature tags, typography, CSS font-variant-caps.