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I have found the need to format text in small caps (with minuscule letters looking like capitals, but still maintaining their size) in Google Docs. I have looked over, under, and in the Docs option menus, but I still have not found any such thing.

I need to apply small caps to a small font size, and the font size won't go any further down, so the method of scaling all-caps text of a smaller font size won't work.

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    You can select a particular font that is small cap. Select help from the menu and type in font. Click on Obtain fonts and select the fonts you want.
    – Jacob Jan Tuinstra
    Dec 31, 2014 at 20:09
  • @pnuts It doesn't; I in fact used to do this, but I find highly tedious, and, in the scenario I am trying, it doesn't work.
    – Conor O'Brien
    Dec 31, 2014 at 22:28
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    @JacobJanTuinstra Then the fonts used would be different and have a highly unprofessional look.
    – Conor O'Brien
    Dec 31, 2014 at 22:29
  • @pnuts It does work (sort of), but is there no solution?
    – Conor O'Brien
    Dec 31, 2014 at 22:36
  • Use only one font type?
    – Jacob Jan Tuinstra
    Dec 31, 2014 at 22:39

6 Answers 6

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Yes you can, but I don't know how to do it, at least not directly. However, it is possible. If you copy in text that's already small caps (e.g. from wikipedia), Docs will preserve the setting. You can then set one of the styles (e.g. Heading n) to this copied text and use it to format other bits of your document as needed. Changing the font, size, and other attributes doesn't lose the small caps setting. It seems that Docs recognizes small caps as a font attribute but simply doesn't expose it via the UI.

So for example, I can create a new doc, copy in a bit of text in small caps, change the Heading 3 style to capture the setting and then delete the text. Then, every time I need text in small caps, I set it to Heading 3. It's clunky but works for me.

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  • Tried both methods, and per the bug mentioned for 'Captials' this solution seems best at present.
    – Randall
    Sep 24, 2015 at 15:20
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    this method didn't work for me. When I paste the small caps from wikipedia, they just look like lowercase letters in google slides
    – dinosaur
    Oct 30, 2016 at 17:47
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    @dinosaur, odd, it no longer works for me either when copying from that wikipedia page. However, it did work when I copied generated text from this site manytools.org/facebook-twitter/smallcaps-text-tool. It worked for me in both Google Docs and Slides.
    – zenzic
    Dec 4, 2016 at 3:48
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    @zenzic The SmallCaps tool does not preserve the actual Latin characters. This makes the document un-searchable and one may not be able to make use of fonts of their choice.
    – Suraj
    Jan 27, 2017 at 12:50
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Working on a Google doc, there is a header titled "Add-ons" - click on that.

Then select "Get Add-ons".

I did a search on small cap and 'Capitals' came up. Download the program.

Highlight the text or group of text you'd like to appear in small caps, go to the "Add-ons" header, select 'Capitals' and "Add small caps".

Hope this works for you too!

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    Unless this translates into using the actual small caps in the font by resorting to CSS font-feature-settings: "smcp" 1 calls, this will not work. Instead it will be a mere caricature. Which thing occurs? You cannot use font-variant: small-caps, nor can you simply resize it. You must use the real one on the font. See here.
    – tchrist
    May 5, 2015 at 1:50
  • 'Captials' is kind of clunky, too. You must type the text first, and then convert it to Small Caps. The conversion created boxes for most of my 's'es. Retyping them works, sort-of, but they come out a different size if I'm using an odd-sized font (ie, 11pt, vs 10 or 12 pt)
    – Randall
    Sep 24, 2015 at 15:10
  • This complement is no longer available.
    – Leandro Bardelli
    Aug 6, 2020 at 16:11
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Interestingly, the Google Doc API supports smallCaps: https://developers.google.com/docs/api/reference/rest/v1/documents#TextStyle.FIELDS.small_caps

So one solution (that you were not looking for, obviously) would be to use that API :)

As of today (Feb 2021), I didn't find it in the Google Docs UI, either.

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Seems like, as of now (October 2023), Capitals, mentioned in a previous answer, is pretty broken. Unclear if it was providing a caricature or not.

But… without writing an add-on, one approach is to have a snippet of HTML that actually uses the small-caps font variant, and then copying that rendered html into a Google Doc. For example:

<p style="font-variant: small-caps">This should be small caps</p>
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You could always also just write the text then make the ones you want to be "small capped" a smaller size.

(Right now I can't show it properly but say the text below is what you want to type. Make the bold/italics part a bigger size than the rest.)

Testing

Testing

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    This does not answer the original question. From the original question: I need to apply small caps to a small font size, and the font size won't go any further down, so the method of scaling all-caps text of a smaller font size won't work.
    – karel
    Oct 30, 2016 at 6:08
  • I'm not sure whether this was the case in 2016, but as of this writing you can actually set the font size to whatever you want (even 1 point) if you type the size in the box. The drop-down menu only shows choices down to 8 pts, which might make it look like 8 pts is the smallest possible font.
    – itub
    Jan 6, 2020 at 20:14
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Jacob Jan Tuinstra is right. Small capitals may or may not be included in your typeface. Some examples of typefaces that have a small capitals font in their family include (from Google Fonts):

... and many more. To find them, search for those that have 'SC' at the end of their name.

That way, you will get an equal weight for your capital and your small capital letters. Faking it with CSS or some other hacks is a typographic malpractice.

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