While the nuts and bolts of this process may seem relatively simple, there’s actually more to it, especially given the variety of other ways designers can alter text case, both across an entire design file and in specific instances.
For instance, the All Caps or Small Caps commands in Adobe InDesign change the appearance of the text, but these commands don’t actually change the text itself — this could lead to text-based print errors when the file is packaged and sent to your inkjet print provider. This distinction is critical when searching or spell checking an entire document file.
InDesign can of course change the case of selected text, but formatting text as small caps results in InDesign automatically using small-cap characters that are designed as part of the font. This means InDesign synthesizes the small caps via scaled down versions of regular text, and this too can produce print errors when your file is moved into production.
Another thing to note about changing text case in InDesign is that the Sentence Case command assumes that certain pieces of punctuation like periods, exclamation marks, and question marks end sentences, thus forcing odd or inconsistent capitalization. This is also key to be aware of when working with text components like abbreviations, file names, and URLs.
