Another issue is the scientists habit to capitalize known terms in their own field. I’ve also seen this capitalization-for-no-apparant-reason in churches. Guess it’s just a human thing :)

Re: caps use... I see this so often in the interaction between our typesetters and authors. The author submits a manuscript using just initials (say, LCD in your example above). The setters send out a proof, with a query next to it, asking “please spell out ‘LCD’” (OK, probably not a good example ’cause everybody knows what that stands for, but it’s only a f’rinstance). The author answers “Liquid Crystal Display”, using initial caps almost without thinking, because the caps of the acronym are in mind. And then the corrected proof ends up saying “Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)”. In most cases, if I spot it, I get rid of those initial caps!

Optionally:

What font is that? The small caps are very short.

It’s custom, and yes: They are a bit short, but it’s partly caused by the rendering.

If you go the small-caps route, it might be worth whipping up some small-caps-sized parentheses.

I have to say, I personally think SC in this case look pretty twee. I don’t know why people are always so anxious to replace every string of capitals with SC. If you think caps are causing dark spots on the page, just open them up a hair.

That’s my opinion.

(Is your client going to be having someone copy-edit and proof this copy?)

The typographic conventions that evolved for small cap usage did so long ago. At that time, text was serifed, small x-height, had no kerning, and capitals were considerably heavier, in stem weight, than lower case. Even so, small capitals were often further distinguished by being letterspaced.

Therefore, small caps are inherently problematic for almost all sans face text usage, especially for short acronyms.

That is why, if one is intent on using sans small caps in running text, one should consider faces which have small x-heights and small caps that are markedly taller than x-height.

This is an early version, so yes: there will be proofing. Thanks for the advice. I think I’ll might go with tracked caps.

Yes, looks like a potential case for medium caps.
FWIW, I agree that the SC in there look rather too small. In this situation I'd just use caps.

Edit: Woops, crossposted. Sorry.

Sounds like I should consider expanding this design with some medium caps and leave the old ones as petite caps.