Unicode has small capital letters for almost the whole alphabet. Almost. There is no small capital Q and no small capital X — they were never encoded, because the alphabet was never meant to be an alphabet. Every small caps generator has to improvise for those two letters, and here is exactly what ours does.
Last updated: 30 August 2026 · SoShareIT Fancy Text editorial team
The two letters that do not exist
Twenty-four of the twenty-six have a genuine small capital character. Two do not.
| Letter | Small capital exists? | What appears instead | What that character actually is |
|---|---|---|---|
| A–P, R–W, Y, Z | Yes | ᴀ ʙ ᴄ ᴅ ᴇ ꜰ ɢ ʜ ɪ ᴊ ᴋ ʟ ᴍ ɴ ᴏ ᴘ ʀ ꜱ ᴛ ᴜ ᴠ ᴡ ʏ ᴢ | Genuine small capital letters |
| Q | No | ǫ | Latin Small Letter O With Ogonek — a different letter entirely |
| X | No | x | An ordinary lowercase x, unchanged |
The Q substitute is the more interesting of the two. ǫ is an o with a small hook underneath, called an ogonek, used in Polish, Lithuanian and Old Norse scholarship. It is not a Q and has never been one. It is used here purely because at small-capital size it happens to look like one.
Why an alphabet has holes in it
Because it was never designed as an alphabet for writing words.
These characters come from the Phonetic Extensions and IPA Extensions blocks. They exist so linguists can transcribe speech precisely — in the International Phonetic Alphabet a small capital letter means a specific sound, distinct from the sound its full-size version represents.
The IPA needs a small capital R because there is a sound that requires it. It has never needed a small capital Q or X, because no transcription convention uses them. So they were not encoded, and Unicode does not add characters because a decorative use has appeared later — the standard encodes what writing systems require.
The result is a set that is not an alphabet, being used as one, with two letters missing. Every site in this niche hits the same wall; the only difference is whether they tell you.
What we substitute, and why we say so
For Q we use ǫ, and for X we leave the ordinary lowercase x in place. Those are the conventional choices and they are what our tool produces — you can verify it by typing a Q into the small caps generator and inspecting the result.
We would rather say this on the page than let you find out later. Two specific things follow from the substitution:
- The Q is a different letter to software. Search, sorting and comparison see an o with an ogonek, not a q. In a name field it may also be treated differently.
- The X is not styled at all. It is the plain letter, so it will look slightly out of place beside genuine small capitals — usually a little taller.
Our editorial policy commits us to flagging this kind of thing rather than presenting a style as complete when it is not.
The full small caps alphabet to copy
Twenty-four genuine small capitals, plus the two substitutes. Tap to copy.
The 24 genuine small capitals
The 2 substitutes
What it means in practice
For most text, nothing. Q and X are the two least common letters in English, and plenty of words and names contain neither.
Where it does matter:
- A name with a Q in it. The substitution is visible if you look, and the character is not the letter you typed. If the name matters — a handle, a brand — check that you are happy with it.
- Anything that will be searched. The ogonek character will not match a search for the letter q, on top of the fact that styled text does not match plain-text search anyway.
- Words with an X. Expect it to look unstyled. That is not a bug, and no generator can fix it, because the character does not exist to use.
If either bothers you, a style drawn from a complete block avoids it — bold and serif cover all twenty-six letters with no substitutions.
FAQ
Why does my X look normal in small caps?
Because it is normal. There is no small capital X in Unicode, so the ordinary letter stays.
Is the Q substitute wrong?
It is a substitution rather than an error. There is no correct character to use, so every generator picks a lookalike; ǫ is the conventional one.
Could you use a different character for Q?
Others exist and all have the same problem — they are some other letter borrowed for its shape. None is more correct, and changing it would only make the output less consistent with everywhere else.
Do capital letters have this issue?
Small caps takes ordinary capitals and renders the lowercase letters as small capitals, so capitals in your text pass through unchanged. The gap only affects lowercase q and x.
Which styles have no missing letters?
Bold, serif, italic and fraktur are complete. Superscript has gaps of its own; cursive is complete but borrows eight capitals from another block.