Force all small caps

Question

Is it possible to force text into lower case small caps without making capital letters lower case?

None of the following makes all the letters lower case small caps:

\textsc{Can I make this line only small caps?}
\scshape{Can I make this line only small caps?}

To get all small caps one needs to format it manually to lower case:

\textsc{can i make this line only small caps?}

Update:

As @barbarabeeton has pointed out \scis deprecated so I have removed that example.

perhaps \lowercase{\scshape WhAtEvEr text}, since otherwise uppercase letters will remain uppercase. but both \sc (which is deprecated in latex) and \scshape should be placed inside the group since they are global directives rather than commands taking an argument. — barbara beeton, May 16, 2013 at 12:06
@barbarabeeton That seems like a good solution. Thank you for the heads up regarding the deprecated \sc – I just saw that it affects the entire group as well. — trmdttr, May 16, 2013 at 12:10

Gonzalo Medina · Accepted Answer · 2013-05-16 12:16:28Z

30

\documentclass{article}

\newcommand\textlcsc[1]{\textsc{\MakeLowercase{#1}}}

\begin{document}

\textlcsc{An ExaMple}

\end{document}

enter image description here

Another option would be to use \MakeTextLowercase from the textcase package:

\usepackage{textcase}
\newcommand\textlcsc[1]{\textsc{\MakeTextLowercase{#1}}}

answered May 16, 2013 at 12:09

Gonzalo Medina

501k67 gold badges1658 silver badges1823 bronze badges

1

So, I wonder which of this or Barbara's is the best one. I would prefer an even shorter solution – but I guess I should create a new command then…
– trmdttr
May 16, 2013 at 12:12
3

+1 If this is related to the tufte-latex class and this question, you might note that the \smallcaps command is there defined as \smallcapsspacing{\MakeTextLowercase{#1}}, where \smallcapspacing produces spaced small capitals, so exactly as Gonzalo Medina suggests.
– Paul Stanley
May 16, 2013 at 12:16
5

@trmdttr \lowercase works only on plain ASCII characters, while \MakeLowercase is smarter.
– egreg
May 16, 2013 at 12:17
1

@trmdttr I changed the example to include a command; I used \MakeLowercase since \lowercase is a TeX command which doesn't always work.
– Gonzalo Medina
May 16, 2013 at 12:17
1

@PaulStanley Oh, I see – then that solves it! You're all a very helpful bunch.
– trmdttr
May 16, 2013 at 12:18

Add a comment |

1 Answer 1