A ruby helper that puts the first letter of a string (like a name) in a span to give it a special styling. For example: you want the first letter of a lastname in a special font, this helper creates a span that enables that.

span_capitalize_helper.rb

def span_capitalize(string)
  name = string.match(/(^[a-z])(.*)/i)
  first_letter = name[1]
  rest = name[2]
  content_tag(:span, first_letter) + rest
end