Typecase

Small Text Generator

Two ways to make text read quieter: small capitals, which sit on the baseline, and superscript, which floats above it. Both alphabets have known gaps, listed below.

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Small capitals
Superscript

What this small text generator does

It converts your text into one of two reduced-size alphabets. Small capitals are capital letter shapes drawn at roughly lowercase height, so a word keeps its normal footing on the line. Superscript letters are smaller still and sit raised, in the position a footnote number takes.

How it actually works

Neither alphabet was created for decoration, and both are incomplete as a result.

The small capitals come from the International Phonetic Alphabet and its Unicode neighbours, where a small capital carries a specific technical meaning — small capital R denotes a particular uvular sound, for instance. Only the letters phoneticians actually needed were encoded. There is no small capital Q and no small capital X anywhere in Unicode, because no phonetic notation ever called for one. This tool substitutes the closest available shapes for those two and leaves the rest genuine.

The superscript letters have a similar story, drawn from a mix of phonetic modifier letters and older typographic characters. Superscript q is the one that was never encoded, so it is passed through at full size. You will see it if you type a q — that is the limit of the alphabet, not a fault in the conversion.

Subscript is sometimes requested alongside these two. It is deliberately not offered here, because Unicode covers barely half the lowercase alphabet in subscript form — b, c, d, f, g, q, w, y and z are all missing. A subscript row would leave most words half-converted and looking broken, which is worse than not offering it.

Where people use it

  • Bio sub-lines, where a small-capitals line under a bold name reads as a subtitle without competing with it.
  • Discord messages and status text, for asides and dry commentary that is meant to be read second.
  • Fan and archive accounts, where small capitals are a long-standing convention for tags and content labels.
  • Superscript for footnote markers in plain-text posts that have no footnote feature.
  • Usernames in games, where a small-capitals tag reads as understated next to everyone else's bold.

These do not scale with the reader's text size. Someone who has increased their system font for legibility gets bigger small capitals, not normal-sized text. On a line that matters, small text is the wrong tool.

Questions about small text

Why does the letter x stay full size in small capitals?

Because Unicode has no small capital X. The small capitals were encoded for phonetic notation, and no phonetic alphabet needed that character, so it was never added. Lowercase x is used in its place, which happens to blend reasonably well because x has no ascender or descender to give it away.

Why does q look different from the other small capitals?

Same reason: there is no small capital Q either. The substitute used here is a lowercase o with a small tail, which is the closest match in shape and weight that exists as a real character. It is the standard workaround, but it is a substitution rather than the genuine article.

Can I get subscript text as well?

Not usefully. Unicode only encodes subscript forms for about half the lowercase alphabet — b, c, d, f, g, q, w, y and z were never added. Any subscript generator you find will silently leave those letters full size, so most words come out half-converted. That is why this tool does not offer it.

Is small text actually smaller, or just a smaller-looking font?

The characters are drawn small by design, at a fixed proportion of the normal letter height. Nothing about the text size setting changes. If the reader enlarges their system font, your small text enlarges with everything else and stays proportionally small.

Does small text work on Instagram and TikTok?

Yes, in bios, captions and display names. Small capitals in particular have very good font coverage because they are part of the phonetic character set that most system fonts ship with. Superscript is slightly less consistent, especially for the less common letters.

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