Definition
The systematic conversion of text data to a uniform character case—typically lowercase—during the preprocessing stage of a RAG pipeline to ensure that search queries and indexed document chunks match regardless of capitalization. This process is critical for maintaining high recall in lexical search and ensuring consistent sub-word tokenization in many embedding models.
Retrieval-side preprocessing vs. front-end UI text styling.
"A stencil that forces every letter, whether typed in cursive or block capitals, into the same uniform mold so a scanner can recognize them as identical."
- Tokenization(Prerequisite)
- Recall Optimization(Goal)
- Named Entity Recognition (NER)(Conflicting Component)
Conceptual Overview
The systematic conversion of text data to a uniform character case—typically lowercase—during the preprocessing stage of a RAG pipeline to ensure that search queries and indexed document chunks match regardless of capitalization. This process is critical for maintaining high recall in lexical search and ensuring consistent sub-word tokenization in many embedding models.
Disambiguation
Retrieval-side preprocessing vs. front-end UI text styling.
Visual Analog
A stencil that forces every letter, whether typed in cursive or block capitals, into the same uniform mold so a scanner can recognize them as identical.