Capital K vs Small K
 

I ran across a pattern where it states to:

Row 7 (dec row): K20, k5, (k2tog)5x, k5, k20 (55 sts)

The K20, k5 ??? What does it mean?:knitting:

They both mean knit. The K20 is probabably capitalized because it's at the beginning, like in a sentence; some word processing programs do it automatically.

So, in this case k25 ?

Ordinarily I would go with what Sue said, but in this case, it does look like maybe they mean something different between the capped k and lowercase k. Is there a list of abbreviations somewhere near the top of the pattern that tells you what's what?

Also, could you give us the name of the pattern or a link to it? That might help.

It looks that way - k 25, then k2tog 5 times and k25 again leaves 55 sts. Notice at the end of the row both 'k's are small, so I don't think think there's anything different about the larger K except that it's first.

Yeah, but why didn't they just say "K25" or "k25" rather than saying "K20, k5"? That's what threw me off!

Why separate these two directives if they're asking you to do the same stitch?

Sometimes patterns are written oddly like that to show the 5 edge sts separately from the other stitches. There's no different meaning in how it's written, just that it's different.

Did a quick search, I think this may be the link to the pattern:

http://www.piece-by-piece.net/Knit/just_knit_shawl.htm

I can't see any reason for the separation. In the next odd numbered row, the stitches are grouped as a k25. Sometimes, as Sue noted, sts will be separated this way to help you see the pattern sts across different rows but that's not the case here. Looking at the shawl, it's all knit.
Very pretty pattern, too.

Yeah, that's written weirdly is all, but doesn't mean anything. The rows with the K10 have a large k at the beginning and smaller one later too. It could be just a typo that they split the k25 into k20 and k5, just ignore it and k 25 sts, just like the next RS row.