Template:Smallcaps all/sandbox

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This is the template sandbox page for Template:Smallcaps all (diff).
See also the companion subpage for test cases.

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This template is used on approximately 3,000 pages and changes may be widely noticed. Test changes in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

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Template:Smallcaps all/sandbox is deprecated.

This text changes most letters, both upper and lower case, to small capitals, though half of the Greek alphabet is instead converted to lower case (namely the letters Α Β Γ Δ Θ Λ Μ Ρ Σ Φ Χ Ω and their accented forms apart from Ώ). With those exceptions, the text is hard-coded as upper case.

This template substitutes letters with their capital variants, then displays them as small caps, about the same height as lower-case letters. The upper-case conversion happens regardless of user preferences, and the content will copy-paste as upper case. For this reason, it is usually not suitable for article text, and is intended for specialized purposes. It is primarily for use in other templates, to correct mixed- or lower-case input.

Other templates have been developed to handle content that should remain lower or mixed-case, as detailed in § Deprecated uses, below.

This template should not be used for emphasis in articles. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters (shortcut: MOS:CAPS), especially the section § All caps and small caps (direct shortcut to the section: MOS:SMALLCAPS).

Usage

Code: {{smallcaps all|Hello World}}
Displayed: HELLO WORLD
Pasted: Correctly as "Hello World" in a few browsers, but incorrectly as "hello world" in many.

To maintain initial full capitals, a second parameter is used. Example:

Code: {{smallcaps all|H|ello}} {{smallcaps all|W|orld}}
Displayed: HELLO WORLD
Pasted: Correctly as "Hello World".

This style is not usually used in Wikipedia. For cases where it is needed, use {{Smallcaps}} (and {{Smallcaps2}} for smaller output), which produce this result without need of additional parameters, and for entire spans of text.

If the template is placed outside a link, it will capitalize the link itself, so in some cases it needs to be placed inside the link.

This template will corrupt HTML character entities, such as  . If a special character must be used in its content, it must be encoded as a decimal character reference (e.g.  ).

If either parameter's content contains an equals sign (=) the parameters need to be numbered, |1= and (if two are used) |2=, or the template will break. This is a general limitation of MediaWiki syntax.

Legitimate uses

This template should only be used for text that is normally all-lowercase regardless of typographic style, but which is desired to be shown in smallcaps for display purposes. An example is indication of stressed syllables in the {{Respell}} template.

It is also capable of mixed-case display with additional parameters, but is rarely needed for this purpose since {{Smallcaps}} and {{Smallcaps2}} do this more robustly.

Deprecated uses

The default parameter of this template should never be used for strings that should be capitalized regardless of typographic style, such as acronyms. As noted above, while it has the capability of being used with additional parameters to represent mixed-case text, this is better done with {{Smallcaps2}} (e.g., TCMoS), or {{Smallcaps}} (e.g., Hello World), both of which work on entire spans of mixed-case text, and without the complication of requiring additional parameters.

Several of the following attempts to lighten all-caps words, abbreviations, or acronyms, as a matter of typographic style, will corrupt the data. Many of them violate the Manual of Style if used in articles and those that do not are better done with other templates:

To quasi-mix the case of acronyms, as in UNESCO (instead of UNESCO) –
To make acronyms and initialisms, and other all-caps strings like Unicode character names, smaller, as in UNESCO and IDEOGRAPHIC COMMA –
A trademark like TIME (instead of TIME) –
To present smallcaps titles of works, in citation styles that use this format –
Era abbreviations in dates such as 625 BCE –
The special case of transliterating YHWH as "the LORD", as in the King James Bible –

Technical notes

This template is based on {{smallcaps}}, including additional wrapper for <span style="text-transform: lowercase;">...</span> – This method is implemented inconsistently in browsers, such that it copy-pastes as the original text in Firefox, but as the altered text in Chrome, Safari, Opera, and text-only browsers.
This template should not be directly substituted because the result will not be just the intended text, but the original text wrapped in HTML and wikitemplate code. It is better to use other templates like {{smallcaps}}, {{smallcaps2}}, or a combination of them, to achieve the desired result, and to correct the actual case of the content while doing so.
Diacritics (å, ç, é, ğ, ı, ñ, ø, ş, ü, etc.) are handled. However, because the job is performed by each reader's browser and fonts, inconsistencies in CSS implementations can lead to some browsers not converting certain rare diacritics.
Use of this template does not generate any automatic categorization. As with most templates, if the argument contains an = sign, the sign should be replaced with {{=}}, or the whole argument be prefixed with 1=. And for wikilinks, you need to use piping. There is a parsing problem with MediaWiki which causes unexpected behavior when a template with one style is used within a template with another style.
There is a problem with dotted and dotless I. {{Lang|tr|{{Smallcaps all|ı i}}}} may gives you I I, although the language is set to Turkish, unless the font includes localized glyphs for small caps variant.
Do not use this inside Citation Style 1 or Citation Style 2 templates, or this template's markup will be included in the COinS metadata. This means that reference management software such as Zotero will have entries corrupted by the markup. For example, if {{smallcaps}} is used to format the surname of Bloggs, Joe in {{cite journal}}, then Zotero will store the name as <span style="font-variant:small-caps;">Bloggs</span>, Joe. This is incorrect metadata. If the article that you are editing uses a citation style that includes small caps, either format the citation manually (see examples below) or use a citation template that specifically includes small caps in its formatting.
This template will not affect the use of HTML character entities like  .

Comparison of the case transformation templates

Template	Shortcut	Purpose	Example	Output	Copy-pastes as
{{Smallcaps}}	{{sc1}} {{SC}}	No conversion, small-caps display, mixed case. No font size change (acronyms are unaffected). Common mixed-case heading style (not in Wikipedia). Uses: Rendering publication titles in citation styles that require them in small-caps.	`{{sc1\|UNICEF}} and 312 {{sc1\|BCE}}` `{{sc1\|Mixed Case}}`	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case
{{Smallcaps2}}	{{sc2}}	No conversion, small-caps display, mixed case. Slightly reduced font size. This is the conventional display of smallcaps for acronyms/initialisms in modern book typography. Other uses: Unicode character names.	`{{sc2\|UNICEF}} and 312 {{sc2\|BCE}}` `{{sc2\|Mixed Case}}`	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case
{{Smallcaps all}}	{{sc}}	Lowercase conversion, small-caps display, all uppercase. The size of lowercase letters. Uses: Stressed syllables (in {{Respell}}); and ???. Warning: Default use will permanently change UPPER- or Mixed-Case data, does not work consistently across different browsers, and is not compatible with named HTML character entities.	`{{sc\|UNICEF}} and 312 {{sc\|BCE}}` `{{sc\|Mixed Case}}`	UNICEF and 312 BCE MIXED CASE	unicef and 312 bce mixed case (in many browsers)
{{Allcaps}}	{{caps}}	No conversion, all-caps display. The size of uppercase letters. Uses: ???.	`{{caps\|UNICEF}} and 312 {{caps\|BCE}}` `{{caps\|Mixed Case}}`	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case
{{Nocaps}}		No conversion, all-lowercase display. The size of lowercase letters. Uses: ???.	`{{nocaps\|UNICEF}} and 312 {{nocaps\|BCE}}` `{{nocaps\|Mixed Case}}`	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case	UNICEF and 312 BCE Mixed Case

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData for this template used by TemplateWizard, VisualEditor and other tools. See a monthly parameter usage report for Template:Smallcaps all in articles based on its TemplateData.

TemplateData for Smallcaps all

No description.

Template parameters[Edit template data]
Parameter		Description	Type	Status
1	`1`	no description	Unknown	optional
2	`2`	no description	Unknown	optional