Another type of variation within a font family is the small-caps. In a small-caps font the lower case letters look similar to the uppercase ones, but in a smaller size and with slightly different proportions. The 'font-variant' property selects that font.

A value of 'normal' selects a font that is not a small-caps font, 'small-caps' selects a small-caps font. It is acceptable (but not required) in CSS1 if the small-caps font is a created by taking a normal font and replacing the lower case letters by scaled uppercase characters. As a last resort, uppercase letters will be used as replacement for a small-caps font.

The following example results in an 'H3' element in small-caps, with emphasized words in oblique small-caps:

      H3 { font-variant: small-caps }
      EM { font-style: oblique }
      

There may be other variants in the font family as well, such as fonts with old-style numerals, small-caps numerals, condensed or expanded letters, etc. CSS1 has no properties that select those.

CSS1 core: insofar as this property causes text to be transformed to uppercase, the same considerations as for 'text-transform' apply.