"Copperplate Gothic" is a font I first used as a child learning Microsoft Word in 2003 or so. I didn't have to scroll far to find the font. The serifs and smallcaps made it seem serious, and appropriate for situations where you needed to give off a strong front. It was a good font to title your Metroid 5 fanfiction with.

As it turns out, every amateur graphic designer thought so too. Copperplate Gothic is all over the place. Even Boar's Head or Paul Allen from American Psycho join the myriad small business who built their logo in Microsoft Powerpoint.

Copperplate Gothic is a good font, but it's not the font of a discerning graphic designer. It's a font of someone who doesn't know any better. It's a font I grew out of when I was a child. It's a font you make an Undertale OC for.

It's the font a child uses when it wants you to treat it seriously.

But...

Nobody talks about it. Every typographer online who wants to tell you that you're keming your kerning, or that you're using a non-metric-compatible font, or that you don't need subpixel rendering, none of them are talking about the scourge of copperplate gothic.

Why not? Even a philistine in the world of typography such as myself can easily see that Copperplate Gothic exudes amateurishness.

Why is nobody talking about this?

There are myriad smallcap serif fonts that look like they were created by a draftsman in the year 1900 for casting in iron.

From Google Fonts alone, consider Playfair Display SC, Bodoni Moda SC, maybe Sedan SC, Volkorn SC, or the Cinzel family. Personally, I think Baskervville SC is the best stand-in for Copperplate Gothic.

Sure, it's Google Fonts, but it's also not copperplate. The only issue is that these lack the consistent width of Copperplate Gothic. The closest replacement I can find is Sweet Gothic Serif but... I don't like it...

There is also Graduate, but don't use that, unless it's for a collegiate application. It just looks so... Collegial.