Usually I simply let acronyms stand in full caps, but my latest thing is just packed with acronyms (not a surprise when discussing NASA). Not being familiar with small caps, I just need to know whether to capitalize the first letter. Is it "nasa" or "Nasa" when in the middle of a sentence? And since my plan is to make small caps any acronym longer than 3 letters, would "WF/PC" be full caps or small caps?
Thanks!
Although I'm not about to claim I'm a massive small caps expert, I have been using it quite a bit lately. If it was me, I wouldn't capitalise NASA at all if you're using small caps already. I'm not a fan of caps used with small in the same word. I think to keep consistent with the rest of your acronyms, I would probably use small caps on the WF/PC as well.
Can I ask why you're not using small caps for acronyms less than 3 letters?
Bringhurst suggests the usage of small caps in any acronyms just as the usage of oldstyle figures in numbers inside a text, as a way to preserv the legibility flow.
Marco hit it on the head. Use all small caps, no need to do a regular cap at the beginning. If you can, use open type all small caps for your character styles (in InDesign), that way it will force capitals to be small caps.
OH! and be sure to letterspace small caps!
What about when the acronym begins a sentence? Capitalize the first letter? Everything? Nothing?
I would try to rewrite the sentence. But I think it's a matter of taste, really.
What about when the acronym begins a sentence? Capitalize the first letter? Everything? Nothing?
Christopher,
I had to try this out to see what I thought. My sceenshots may be a little large. The typeface is Scala.
capitalize first letter
capitalize everything
rearrange sentence
capitalize nothing
I think I'd go with rearrange or keep it all opentype small caps (capitalize nothing).
Other than the mess about NASA, can you guess who this text is about?
[[Hermann Zapf]], I guess.
correct.
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