InDesign

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Change the case of type

The All Caps or Small Caps commands change the appearance of text, but not the text itself. Conversely, the Change Case command changes the case setting of selected text. This distinction is important when searching or spell-checking text. For example, suppose you type “spiders” in your document and apply All Caps to the word. Using Find/Change (with Case Sensitive selected) to search for “SPIDERS” will not find the instance of “spiders” to which All Caps was applied. To improve search and spell-check results, use the Change Case command rather than All Caps.

Change text to All Caps or Small Caps

InDesign can automatically change the case of selected text. When you format text as small caps, InDesign automatically uses the small-cap characters designed as part of the font, if available. Otherwise, InDesign synthesizes the small caps using scaled-down versions of the regular capital letters. The size of synthesized small caps is set in the Type Preferences dialog box.

Before (top) and after (bottom) setting BC and AD in small caps to complement old-style numerals and surrounding text

If you select All Caps or Small Caps in an OpenType font, InDesign creates more elegant type. If you’re using an OpenType font, you can also choose All Small Caps from the Character panel menu or the Control panel. (See Apply OpenType font attributes.)

  1. Select text.
  2. Choose All Caps or Small Caps in the Character panel menu or in the Control panel. If the text was originally typed in all caps, selecting Small Caps will not change the text.

Specify the size for small caps

  1. Choose Edit > Preferences > Advanced Type (Windows) or InDesign > Preferences > Advanced Type (Mac OS).
  2. For Small Caps, type a percentage of the original font size for text to be formatted as small caps. Then click OK.

Change capitalization

  1. Select text.
  2. Choose one of the following in the Type > Change Case submenu:

    • To change all characters to lowercase, choose Lowercase.

    • To capitalize the first letter of each word, choose Title Case.

    • To change all characters to uppercase, choose Uppercase.

    • To capitalize the first letter of each sentence, choose Sentence Case.

Note: The Sentence Case command assumes that the period (.), exclamation point (!), and question mark (?) characters mark the ends of sentences. Applying Sentence Case may cause unexpected case changes when these characters are used in other ways, as in abbreviations, file names, or Internet URLs. In addition, proper names may become lowercase when they should be uppercase.