Enquiry on small caps in Russian

[J. W.]

Ottawa (Canada), Thursday 31/7/08 13h05 EDT

Dear SEELANGers,

Could anyone familiar with the current Russian press
please tell me whether small capitals are ever used in
place of lower-case letters in Russian texts?  This is
a practice quite common in English for the purpose of
highlighting titles and critical passages.  It works
in English since most English letters have distinct
upper- and lower-case forms.

In Russian, however, only 6 of the 32 letters have a
distinction between upper and lower case, which (it
seems to me) makes such a practice largely ineffective
as a highlighting tool.  I have never seen it myself
in Russian texts.  But I am still wondering whether it
is used at all, and if so, how common it is today, for
example, in either scholarly journals or popular
magazines.

John Woodsworth
Certified Translator (Russian-English)
Member, Literary Translators' Association of Canada
Adm. Assistant and Research Assistant, Slavic Research
Group at the University of Ottawa
Website:  http://kanadacha.ca
e-mail: jw at kanadacha.ca

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