Is there a News Gothic with small caps? I wouldn’t scale the caps down to x-height – that would look awkward. Half a point smaller would do.

Benton Sans. Benton Sans is a remake of News Gothic, Franklin Gothic and Trade Gothic. (They were originally designed to work together.)

That would be preferable to the original News Gothic, i guess.

Robert Bringhurst says FBI and NATO should really be small caps. The idea is that they are part of a sentence and should blend in gracefully (like oldstyle numbers). But just like with numbers it might be "pretentious" as they put it on the H&FJ website. In one of their typefaces they offer a three-quarter set of figures as a solution to that.

Robert Bringhurst says FBI and NATO should really be small caps...

Who cares what Bringhurst says. Develop your own typographic sensibilities.

Love to hear this, James!

> Who cares what Bringhurst says. Develop your own typographic sensibilities.

Well, a lot of designers do. Because most of what he says makes sense.

If we all "develop our own typographic sensibilities" we will wind up with a world where Comic Sans is appropriate for tombstones and funeral invitations.

First you learn the rules. They you learn how to break the rules. (It doesn't work the other way round.)

If we all “develop our own typographic sensibilities” we will wind up with a world where Comic Sans is appropriate for tombstones and funeral invitations.

And if the designer of that tombstone and funeral invite feels it conveys what they want. Good for them. Better that than feeling the need to consulting an arbiter of taste before making a move.

If you have to use a face that has no small caps, I would recommend:

1. Drop the cap height down to just taller than x-height
2. Track it out a bit
3. Beef up the weight with the Stroke feature in your layout application--you can add reaaaaly small amounts.
4. Optional, increase horizontal scaling, say to 103 or 104%.

This is my practice, but as James says, develop your own sensibility as to which of these techniques you employ, and exactly what values you assign to the variables.

Wow thanks Nick, that was very convincing on News Gothic.