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Uses of small caps Small caps are often used for text that is all uppercase; this makes the run of capital letters seem less "jarring" to the reader. For example, the style of many publications, including the Atlantic Monthly and USA Today, is to use small caps for initialisms more than three letters; thus: "U.S." and "FDR" in normal caps, but "NATO" in small caps. The initialisms "A.D." and "B.C." are often smallcapped as well. Small caps are commonly used for showing keyboard shortcuts: for example, "The keyboard shortcut in Microsoft Word for small caps is CTRL + SHIFT + K." Perhaps the most common use of small capitals is in the rendering of the word "LORD" in many versions of the Bible. Typically, an ordinary "Lord" corresponds to the use of the word Adonai in the original Hebrew, but the small caps "LORD" corresponds to the use of Yaweh in the original. French and some British publications use small caps to indicate the surname by which someone with a long formal name is to be designated in the rest of a written work. An elementary example is Don QUIXOTE de La Mancha. Similarly, they are used for those languages in which the surname comes first, such as the romanization MAO Zedong. Some publishers' house styles, such as those of Newsweek and DC Comics, use small caps to refer to the name of their own publications inside the same or another publication. The text of a formal monumental inscription or the legend on a coin are often rendered in small caps: "Sir Christopher Wren's tomb in St Paul's Cathedral reads, in Latin, simply SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS CIRCUMSPICE" (approximately meaning "If you are looking for his monument, look around" — referring to the cathedral itself, which he designed). Trivia In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the character Death always speaks in small caps. See also | ||||||||||
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