How this calculator works
Unicode reserves code points for letters that look like small capitals, mostly in the Phonetic Extensions block, with a few in Latin Extended-D and the IPA extensions. They are ordinary characters, not a font style, so the look survives copy and paste into apps that would otherwise ignore a font setting. Every Latin letter except x has a small capital form; x has no separate code point and stays a normal lowercase x. Digits and punctuation have no small capital forms, so they keep their usual size.
Formula
Each letter is replaced by its Unicode small capital code point: a to z maps to a fixed table of 25 letters, with x left unchanged. Upper case and lower case input both map to the same glyph. Non-letters are copied unchanged, and the page counts letters and digits that had no mapping.
Worked example
Hello World becomes ʜᴇʟʟᴏ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ, a single string of small capital characters with the space left as a space. The 11 characters in the input give 11 characters in the output. A word containing x, such as boxes, keeps an ordinary lowercase x among small capitals, which is expected and not an error.
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Frequently asked questions
Are these real letters or just formatting?
They are real Unicode characters, not formatting. That is why they keep their appearance in a text message or a profile field, and also why a spell checker may not recognise the word. The underlying text is a different string from the letters you typed.
Why does my text look like boxes or question marks?
The font in that app has no glyph for some small capital characters. The characters are still there and will copy correctly elsewhere. Choosing a font with wide Unicode coverage, or using a real small caps font feature, avoids the problem.
Which letters have no small capital form?
Only x among the basic Latin letters. Small capital q was added to Unicode as U+A7AF; older fonts may still show a fallback for it. Digits, accented letters and punctuation have no small capital forms, so they stay at their normal size.
Is small caps text accessible?
Not ideal. Screen readers may spell the word out letter by letter, because each character is a phonetic letter rather than an ordinary one. For a website or a document you control, use real lowercase text with the CSS font-variant small-caps setting instead.
Can search engines find text written this way?
Usually not. A search for hello does not match the small capital version, because the code points differ. Do not use this style for headings, product names or anything that needs to be found by search.