WEB STANDARDS CREATIVITY

Small caps
There is one more typographic element that I’ve chosen to address, to apply in the #about paragraph on the right side of
Poe’s homepage. I want the first line to appear in small caps.
The basic markup of #about is very similar to #main.
Edgar Allan Poe lorem ipsum...
More About Poe →
Small caps are capital letters that are usually slightly taller than their typeface’s x-height, which is the height of its lowercase
letter x. Thus, they are effectively lowercase capital letters. They are commonly used for abbreviations, acronyms, and, as in
this case study’s example, to mark the beginning of a text in a more subdued manner than a versal would. For this purpose,
the first few words or the entire first line of an introductory paragraph might be set in small caps.
Fair warning
To the untrained eye, small caps can easily be mistaken for merely
shrunken versions of their uppercase counterparts. However, in a
well-designed typeface, small caps are drawn separately from the
uppercase letters, and the subtle differences between the two maintain
the consistency of the letters’ stroke weights (Figure 7-22). True
small caps are easier to read at small point sizes and won’t disrupt
the flow of the text, whereas faux small caps (for example, 8-point
uppercase type set amid a block of otherwise 12-point type) are
almost always conspicuous and distracting.
Figure 7-22. Note the difference in stroke width between
the faux small cap (left), the full cap (center), and the true
small cap (right).
chapter 7 Bridging the Type Divide: Classic Typography with CSS
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