[Tex/LaTex] Using small caps for abbreviations

acronymsfontssmall-caps

I’m using small caps to mark up acronyms. Many style guides recommend this to make the acronyms stand out less among the lower-case letters.

However, I didn’t find good advice of what to do with mixed-case acronyms, such as “OpenMP”. For consistency, I’m currently setting them in small caps as well, e.g. \textsc{OpenMP}.

However, I feel that this defeats the original purpose of the small caps, and indeed it makes the abbreviation stand out disproportionately from the surrounding text, causing disruption. But all the other alternatives seem to have disadvantages as well.

For reference, these are the alternatives that I can think of.

rendered example

\textsc{OpenMP}, as mentioned above. Consistent with other abbreviations, in that it uses small caps all through. Inconsistent in that it makes minuscules into small caps and preserves majuscules.
\textsc{o}pen\textsc{mp}, only small-cap the capitals, logically the most consistent with the other abbreviations, but looks prohibitive.
OpenMP, normal font.

Am I missing something? What is the best alternative? What rationale can you offer for your decision?

Furthermore, I am currently defining my abbreviations via a convenient macro:

\newacronyms{api, cpu, dna, oop, OpenMP, …}

Which defines macros \api, \cpu, … \OpenMP etc.

If possible, I’d like to preserve this style. I’m not sure how I could achieve such a convenient mechanism for methods 2 and 3 above. How would this be implemented?

Best Answer

Not really a compelling rationale, but I would go with method 2 because that's what The Economist does:
text snippet from The Economist with mixed case abbreviation
(The Economist, November 6th 2010)

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Small digits for small caps

All things being equal, you're probably using Computer Modern Roman, not because iopart has loaded it, but because it's the default used if you don't explicitly specify any other. (Your pdf reader can confirm this for you. Usually all you need do is open the document then, depending on the reader, looking in Properties / Fonts. Look for fontnames like 'CMR10' (CM 10pt roman) and 'CMCSC10' (CM 10pt small caps).)

There are many solutions to your problem. Apart from explicitly rescaling your lining figures as Niel points out (tho take care that 'faking' small caps doesn't run you into, say, untoward kerning issues), two of the easiest are these:

If you wish to stay with computer modern, use \oldstylenums to convert normal "lining" (uppercase) figures to "oldstyle" ("text" or lowercase) figures. E.g., \textsc{fp}\oldstylenums{6}. Note, however, that some CMR oldstyle figures look less like osf than you might want (the digit '6' happens to be one of these).
Alternatively, you might prefer the look and feel of the oldstyle figures offered by different fonts. However, not every font offers these natively (i.e., you might need to apply the \oldstylenums command when using most other non-CMR fonts).

Here's some code that might help to check out many of the rather few fonts that open up text figures. Assuming each font is actually loaded on your system, one by one just uncomment and recomment each of the commented lines below, compiling each to see which look and feel you most prefer. Note, however, that this technique typesets all figures in your document in oldstyle. Nevertheless, it means you won't need to apply the \oldstylenums command at any time.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

%\usepackage[sc,osf]{mathpazo}   % Palatino with pazo math fonts
%\renewcommand*\rmdefault{pplx}  % Palatino with lining (uppercase) nums
%\renewcommand*\rmdefault{pplj}  % Palatino with text (lowercase or oldstyle) nums

%\usepackage[osf]{venturis}
%\usepackage[osf]{libertine}
%\usepackage[osf]{MinionPro}
%\usepackage[fulloldstylenums]{kpfonts}

\begin{document}
\textsc{fp9876543210}
9876543210
\end{document}

[Tex/LaTex] Can small-caps be automated for abbreviations and acronyms

I think it's difficult to implement such macros. However, we can do it with help from some preprocess. It easy to write a script to do this. For example, an one-line script of sed:

sed -e "s/\(\s\)\([A-Z]\+\)\([^A-Z]\)/\1\\\textsc{\2}\3/g" foo.tex

You may modify it as your wish.

On windows platform sed have to be installed manually, from GNUWin32 or MingW. Just write a batch file and configure the editor to call it.

Related Question