Small Text Generator

"Small text generator" in all four styles

Converted by this tool when the page was built. Where a style had no small form for a letter, the note says which.

• Small caps ꜱᴍᴀʟʟ ᴛᴇxᴛ ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀᴛᴏʀ 17 of 18 letters converted; no form for x.
• Small caps, capitals kept Sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴛᴇxᴛ ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀᴛᴏʀ 17 of 18 letters converted; no form for x.
• Superscript ˢᵐᵃˡˡ ᵗᵉˣᵗ ᵍᵉⁿᵉʳᵃᵗᵒʳ
• Subscript ₛₘₐₗₗ ₜₑₓₜ gₑₙₑᵣₐₜₒᵣ 17 of 18 letters converted; no form for g.

Three sets of small letters, none of them complete

Plain text has no font size. A bio, a username or a chat message carries characters and nothing else, so the only way to make text look small is to use characters that are small to begin with. Unicode has three families of them, and every one has holes.

The table below is the honest version, generated from this tool's own character tables. A tick means the letter has a small form; a dash means it does not, and will stay full size.

Small capitals are missing 2, superscript lowercase is missing 1, superscript capitals are missing 7, and subscript is missing 9 — more than a third of the alphabet. That is why the tool shows a count on every result instead of letting you find out after pasting.

Why Unicode never finished the alphabet

It was never trying to. The Unicode Consortium's position is that making text bigger, smaller, raised or lowered is formatting, and formatting belongs in the document — a word processor's superscript button, a web page's styles — not in the character set. A small letter only gets its own code point when some notation needs it as a symbol in its own right.

And that is exactly where each of these sets came from.

Small capitals are speech sounds

ʀ, ɴ, ɢ, ʟ, ʙ, ʜ, ɪ and ʏ are International Phonetic Alphabet letters, each for a particular sound: ʀ is the rolled r at the back of the throat heard in some French and German, ɪ is the vowel in bit. Most of the rest came later, in a block for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet used by linguists working on Finnish, Hungarian and their relatives. Nobody needed a small capital x for a sound, so there isn't one.

Superscript letters are modifiers

Phoneticians write small raised letters to show how a sound is changed: ʰ for the puff of air after the p in pin, ʷ for rounded lips, ʲ for a y-like colouring. Those modifier letters are what the superscript style borrows. Lowercase is almost complete because almost every letter turned out to be useful as a modifier somewhere; q was the holdout.

Subscript letters came in batches

The lowered letters were added a few at a time for phonetic and mathematical notation, and only the ones somebody asked for. That is why there is a subscript h, k, l, m, n, p, s and t but no b, c, d, f or g — not because those would be hard to draw, but because no notation needed them badly enough.

The newer characters, and why they are off by default

Some gaps have finally been filled. A small capital Q was added in 2018, and a superscript q along with superscript capitals C, F and Q arrived in 2021. Tick Fill gaps with 2018–2021 characters and the tool uses them.

The trouble is fonts. A character can be in the standard for years before the fonts on most people's phones include it, and until then it shows as an empty box. Your screen may render them perfectly while your reader's shows a row of rectangles. With the option on, small caps covers 25 letters and superscript lowercase covers all 26; whether that is worth the risk depends on who is reading.

Small caps the way printers set them

The tool gives two small-caps results, because there are two conventions. Small caps turns every letter into a small capital. Small caps, capitals kept leaves real capitals at full height and shrinks the rest, which is how small capitals have always been set in print — the first words of a chapter, abbreviations such as bc and ad, and in many English Bibles the word Lord when it stands for the Hebrew divine name.

The kept-capitals version usually reads better, because word shapes survive: a capital at the start of a name still signals a name.

Superscript capitals sit at odd heights

The superscript capitals were designed for phonetics, not for setting words, and fonts draw them at slightly different heights and weights from the lowercase ones. A word that mixes the two — a capital then lowercase — often looks as if it is bouncing.

Even superscript lowercases everything first, so every letter comes from the same family and the line is level. Where a capital has no superscript form and the option is off, the tool uses the lowercase one anyway and says so on the card.

Formulas that convert themselves

Most people who need superscript and subscript are not decorating a bio. They are typing a chemical formula into a chat, an exponent into a comment, or a date into a caption, and converting each digit by hand is tedious. The Formulas mode knows the rules.

Typed normally, converted by the rules

• Glucose C₆H₁₂O₆ Typed as C6H12O6
• Water, balanced 2H₂ + O₂ → 2H₂O Typed as 2H2 + O2 → 2H2O
• Sulfate ion SO₄²⁻ Typed as SO4^2-
• Ammonium and iron(III) NH₄⁺ and Fe³⁺ Typed as NH4+ and Fe3+
• Pythagoras a² + b² = c² Typed as a^2 + b^2 = c^2
• A sequence a₍ₙ₊₁₎ = aₙ + d Typed as a_(n+1) = a_n + d
• Ordinals 1ˢᵗ, 2ⁿᵈ, 3ʳᵈ, 4ᵗʰ Typed as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th

Chemistry

A number straight after an element or a closing bracket is a count, so it is lowered. A number at the start of a formula is a coefficient and stays full size, as does the number after a hydrate dot in CuSO4·5H2O.

Charges are the subtle part, because NH4+ and Fe3+ look alike and mean different things. In ammonium the 4 is a count and only the plus is raised; in iron(III) the 3 is the charge and is raised with it. The tool follows the rule a chemist uses without thinking: a single element with a number and a sign is a charged atom, a group of elements keeps its count. Where that guess would be wrong, write the charge after a caret and it is always raised.

Maths

The same convention calculators and programming languages use: a caret raises what follows it, an underscore lowers it, and brackets group several characters. Unicode's gaps still apply — there is no subscript y, so x_y keeps its y full size and the card tells you.

Ordinals

The letters after a number are raised, as they often are in print and in formal invitations: the 21ˢᵗ century, May 3ʳᵈ.

Fractions, units and footnotes

A few small characters are so common that they have been on keyboards and in fonts since long before Unicode: ¹, ² and ³ were part of the original Western European character sets, which is why m² and cm³ display everywhere. The rest of the superscript digits arrived later but are now just as widely supported, so footnote markers like these¹ ² ³ are among the safest small text there is.

Fractions work the same way. Unicode has ready-made ½, ⅓, ¼ and a handful of others, and for anything else there is a trick: a superscript number, the fraction slash ⁄, and a subscript number, which many fonts draw as a single neat fraction. Type ^7 in maths mode to get the top half, _9 for the bottom, and join them with ⁄ for ⁷⁄₉.

Degrees and trademarks have their own characters too — °, ™, ℠ and ® — so there is no need to build them from superscript letters, which would look slightly wrong next to the real thing.

Small text in a name

Display names are where small text is used most, and where it is easiest to get wrong. A whole name in superscript is hard to read and impossible to search for. A name with one small element — a surname in small caps, a tiny ᵗʰᵉ before a title, a raised initial — keeps the part people search for in ordinary letters and still looks distinctive.

Check the gaps first. A surname with a q or an x in it cannot be fully set in small caps, and a name with a g, y or w cannot be subscripted at all; the card for each style tells you before you commit. If the name you want does not survive, the Nickname Generator may find a shorter form that does.

Where small text works

Bios, captions, display names and comments accept it almost everywhere. Usernames generally do not. Footnote markers¹ and units like m² are among its most useful jobs, and the "whispered" reply in tiny superscript is a long-standing joke.

The usual costs apply. Search will not match it, since ᴀ is not a. Screen readers read the characters individually, and a few skip them altogether. Shrink a phrase for effect, but keep anything important — your name, an instruction, a price — at full size.

Related tools

The Fancy Text Generator has small caps, superscript and subscript among 58 styles. The Bubble Text Generator goes the other way, with letters and numbers in circles and squares, and the Strikethrough Text Generator crosses text out or underlines it without changing the letters underneath.

Common questions

How do I make text smaller?

Type into the box above and copy the style you want. Plain text cannot carry a font size, so these are different characters — small capitals, raised letters, lowered letters — that look small wherever you paste them.

Why are some letters still full size?

Because Unicode has no small version of them. There is no subscript b, c, d, f, g, q, w, y or z, no small capital x, and no superscript capital S, X, Y or Z. Each result card lists exactly which letters it could not shrink, so you can rephrase or pick a different style.

How do I type H2O with a small 2?

Switch to Formulas and choose Chemistry. Type H2O, C6H12O6 or Ca(OH)2 normally and the counts are lowered for you. Charges are raised: write Na+ or Fe3+, or put the charge after a caret for anything ambiguous, as in SO4^2-.

How do I type x squared?

In Formulas, choose Maths and type x^2. Anything after a caret is raised and anything after an underscore is lowered, and brackets group more than one term: e^(-x), a_(n+1).

What does "Fill gaps with 2018–2021 characters" do?

It uses a few letters Unicode added recently — small capital Q, superscript q, and superscript capitals C, F and Q. They fill real gaps, but many phones and computers do not yet have fonts for them and show boxes instead, so the option is off by default.

Can I turn small text back into normal text?

Yes. Switch to Back to normal and paste it in. Small capitals, superscript and subscript all map back to ordinary letters and digits.

Is anything I type uploaded?

No. Everything happens in your browser, and nothing is stored.