Initial letter is a decorative element. It is usually used at the beginning of a section or chapter in a document. This is an oversized capital letter located at the beginning of a paragraph or block of text. It occupies two or more lines of plain text in height.
Creating a drop cap in Word is easy enough. First, select the first letter of the paragraph in which you want to create a drop cap.
Then open the tab Insertion (Insert).
In section Text (Text) click Drop Cap (Add Drop Cap) and choose which type of drop cap you want to create. You can make the rest of the paragraph text wrap around the drop cap − Dropped (In the text), or put it in the margins – In margin (On the field).
Before inserting a drop cap, you can change its settings. To do this, in the drop-down menu Drop Cap (Add drop cap) click Drop Cap Options (drop cap settings). You can change the font of the drop cap, set how many lines of normal text it will occupy in height and how much distance will remain to the text to the right of it. When you have configured all the necessary settings, click OKto save your changes.
Inserted a drop cap before setting the parameters? No problem. It is placed in a text field that can be selected. Place the cursor just before or after a drop cap and you’ll see a dotted border around the drop cap. Hover your mouse over the edge of the text box until it changes to a black crosshair.
Then right-click and from the context menu select Drop Cap (drop letter). Now you can change the drop cap parameters in the same way as described above.
You can also change the height of the drop cap manually. To do this, click on the border of the text field containing the drop cap and drag down the middle marker of the bottom border of the field. If you do this, you will increase or decrease the space between the drop cap and the rest of the text in the paragraph.
Drop caps are commonly used in printed documents to improve readability. They highlight important points and help the reader move through the text. They are often found in novels. However, drop caps are rarely used in online documents, because they are displayed differently in different browsers and this point is difficult to control.