Quote:
Originally Posted by bookman156
It depends. For some thing like '7am' the 'am' would be better as small caps, but it doesn't matter too much if not. But for historical works littered with BC/AD and BCE/CE then small caps I would say are essential. Some might regard it as a nicety, but obviously 'bc/ad' are going to be a bad fallback, so you'd either be forced to use full caps, which can dominate a page far too much, or a span class and smaller font size.
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That's all well and good, IF IF
IF you can embed a smallcaps font. Hell, if one even exists for the font in question. eReaders don't create the fonts on the fly; the font (the specific font within the typeface) must be embedded into the file being read. Thus, you can "write" smallcap coding from now until hell freezes over, but if the font (e.g., Adobe Caslon SmallCaps) is not toted along with the ePUB, the face will not display.
AND, that only works
if a) the device supports font embedding and b) the user remembers to turn ON publisher fonts. (And on Paperwhites, a shockingly high number of users seem to think that "publisher fonts" is some sort of highly-contagious device STD that is ne'er to be turned on....)
Oh and let's not forget what happens with the user
changes fonts--say, to Helvetica. Or Bookerly, or...whatever, a typeface that doesn't even
have smallcaps. Oooops....
The other alternative is that you create faux small-caps--the dreaded all-caps at 80% of the like.
Honestly, talk about hot buttons. Don't get me started about SMALLCAPS, of all the cursed things. I love grand lovely book design as much as the next guy, but...eBooks, and the vast alternative universes between various and sundry eBook readers and software...that's a whole other dimension.
Hitch