Small Text Generator
Three different tricks make text look small: small capitals, superscript and subscript. Each covers a different part of the alphabet.
Three ways to make text look small
They are not variants of one thing. Small capitals are real capital letters drawn at lowercase height; superscript and subscript are letters lifted above or dropped below the baseline. Each set covers a different slice of the alphabet, so each behaves differently when you type a sentence into it.
| Style | Small text test 42 | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Small caps | ꜱᴍᴀʟʟ ᴛᴇxᴛ ᴛᴇꜱᴛ 42 | All letters, no digits |
| Superscript | ˢᵐᵃˡˡ ᵗᵉˣᵗ ᵗᵉˢᵗ ⁴² | Most letters, all digits |
| Subscript | ₛₘₐₗₗ ₜₑₓₜ ₜₑₛₜ ₄₂ | Few letters, all digits |
What each set actually contains
| Style | Available | Missing (stays normal size) |
|---|---|---|
| Small caps | ᴀʙᴄᴅᴇꜰɢʜɪⱼᴋʟᴍɴᴏᴘǫʀꜱᴛᴜᴠᴡxʏᴢ | Digits, punctuation. Capitals and lowercase map to the same glyphs. |
| Superscript | ᵃᵇᶜᵈᵉᶠᵍʰⁱʲᵏˡᵐⁿᵒᵖQʳˢᵗᵘᵛʷˣʸᶻ⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹ | Q has no superscript form. |
| Subscript | ₐₑₕᵢⱼₖₗₘₙₒₚᵣₛₜᵤᵥₓ₀₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉ | b, c, d, f, g, q, w, y, z and most capitals |
The gaps are not bugs in this page — those characters do not exist in Unicode. When a letter is missing, the generator leaves it as ordinary text, which is why subscript sentences look uneven: a word like "beyond" comes out as bₑyₒₙd, half dropped and half not.
A note on small caps. The glyphs used here are the "small capital" letters of the International Phonetic Alphabet, not a typographic small-caps feature. Two consequences: there is no difference between typing "Hello" and "HELLO", and Q maps to ǫ, which is a real letter in some languages and looks slightly off in English words.
Where each style earns its place
- Small caps for a quiet label, a section header inside a caption, or a brand name that should not shout. It is the most readable of the three.
- Superscript for footnotes, exponents, trademark-style tags and compact numbers. It is also the most widely supported: superscript digits predate the internet.
- Subscript for chemical formulas and mathematical indices in plain-text fields. It is the least complete set, so keep its use to words without b, c, d, f, g, q, w, y or z.
Legibility, honestly
At 18 pixels these characters are legible. In a chat bubble on a phone, at the size a status line is rendered, superscript and subscript are close to unreadable — they are drawn at roughly half the x-height of the surrounding text. Small caps survive better but still look smaller than the rest of the line.
None of the three should carry information a reader must not miss. A date, a price or a dosage in subscript is a legibility problem, and for assistive technology it is worse: the characters may be read one at a time, announced by their Unicode names, or skipped.
Cutting and pasting
Generated text is ordinary characters, so it survives every plain-text field. The two failure modes to expect:
- Fields that normalise. Some search boxes and sign-up forms run Unicode normalisation, which can turn full-width or compatibility characters back into plain letters. Small caps and superscript are not normalised away, but they may be rejected by a whitelist.
- Fonts without the glyphs. The superscript set is old and widely covered; the small-capital set is patchier, and a few letters (ꜰ, ꜱ, ᴢ) are missing from older Android fonts.
Questions
Can I get real small caps in a document?
Yes — in a word processor or on the web, real small caps are a font feature (OpenType smcp) that keeps the letters as normal text. That is better for documents and printing; the characters on this page are for plain-text fields that have no font settings.
Why do my numbers stay large in small caps?
There are no small-capital digit glyphs. Superscript digits exist, so if you need small numbers, use the superscript style instead of small caps.
Does superscript text break line spacing?
Usually not. Superscript characters have their own metrics, so the line height is driven by the normal letters around them. A line made only of superscript text can look vertically off because there is no baseline-setting character in it.