Normally when you write time, such as 10:00 a.m. or 7:00 p.m., the a.m. and p.m. should be small caps. Doing so is just one more way to make your novel’s layout more professional.
This is a style choice and is not required. In fact, I just finished a book published by a large publisher where small caps were not used for a.m. and p.m.
At one point, in my novel all instances were small caps but somehow along the way, this formatting was lost, so I needed to add it back in. I could have searched for every instance and manually added the formatting, but I chose to do it the fast way: Find and Replace.
Adding Small Caps to Word
- Press ctrl + H to open to the Find and Replace window.
- Enter a.m. into the find field.
- Enter a.m. into the replace field.
- Click the More button (unless it is already clicked in which case you will see the Less button).
- Click Format | Fonts.
- Click the Small caps check box.
- Replace one to make sure it works. Then replace all.
Repeat for p.m.
Adding Small Caps to Sigil
This can be done in Sigil using the following css:
span.smallcaps {
font-variant: small-caps;
}
The you can find and replace all instances of a.m. and p.m. with these find and replace strings:
Regex find: ([ap]\.m\.)
Replace: <span>\1</span>
Replace all and you are done.