small caps are often used for sections of text that should be emphasized and where a run of uppercase capital letters would appear jarring to the reader. for example, the style of many american publications, including the "atlantic monthly" and "usa today", is to use small caps for acronyms and initialisms longer than three letters—thus "u.s." in normal caps, but "ɴᴀᴛᴏ" in small caps. the initialisms ᴄᴇ, ʙᴄᴇ, ᴀᴍ, and ᴘᴍ are often typeset in small caps.