In typography, “small caps” refer to uppercase (capital) characters used in-lieu of lowercase (small) characters, where these uppercase characters are set at the same height as the lowercase characters.

Small caps are typically used for titles, headlines, column headings, etc. They are also good for any text that you would usually use all capitals. This is because the use of small caps makes the run of capital letters seem less jarring, and would also often require less space than all caps.

While many word processors and text formatting systems include an option to format text in small caps (which leaves uppercase letters as they are but converts lowercase letters to small caps), this is a feature that is lacking in most graphics editing software.

Some fonts have inherent small caps, ie they use smaller capital letters in place of the lowercase characters. These fonts are useful when you wish to use small caps to bring distinction to your designs.

Here are some fonts with inherent small caps:

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The TIOBE Programming Community Index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index for August 2009 has been released and Objective-C enters top 20 (at position 19), surpassing ActionScript (at position 22).

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