This is surely a dumb question. I am part of a small academic research center and we have 2 house fonts. Scala Sans is one of them. The version we have of these fonts is pretty old and perhaps even faulty--it actually shows up as 2 fonts, ScalaSans and Scala Sans, which is a giant pain at times.

I've noticed that Scala Sans caps has comparatively large numbers. This strikes me as very odd. I'm not a typography expert so I'm not sure and thought I would ask here. Is this "normal"? Our house style has certain headlines in caps and this always jumps out at me as odd-looking:



Thanks for your feedback.

That is because you are using the lowercase of the Caps face. The height of the numbers is correct, they are at cap-height.

OK that makes sense. Thanks. In that case I have a design/aesthetics problem.

I really prefer the look of Scala Sans caps in lowercase for titles. I also feel that using title case in an all-caps font is unattractive (top example). Title case does work better with the numbers, but it seems so lumpy. Is there a consensus on using initial capitals in a Caps font?

The middle example, using all uppercase in a Caps face, loses much of the attractive proportions in lowercase Scala Sans.

I simply like the look of lowercase Scala Sans (bottom) except when there are numbers involved. I wonder if oldstyle numbers would look better. The problem then is that this is not an opentype font, so I'd have to buy a new version.

There is no consensus it is merely a matter of the taste of the designer (alas, where have the type directors gone?). There is a golden rule though, an all caps text line shall never run over more than one line.

Personally I find all caps text unreadable, unacceptable and I will not read it. Even a header. I find it offensive. A short line small caps titling is the only thing I will accept. But that is me.

Going to agree with Judgemental Kat here. Looking at your three examples, the first one is the most readable of them. Long runs of nearly-identical spacing and height gets very hard on the eyes very quickly. All-caps should be no more than three or four words in a title or header, and even then there are probably better ways to highlight your text.

Thanks both of you for your input. I think the solution is to get away from this all-caps style.