in Design
Drop caps and raised initials
A large initial letter can open a chapter with real presence, or look like an afterthought. How drop caps and raised initials are set well.
Enlarged initial letters are one of the oldest devices in book design. Medieval scribes marked the beginnings of texts and sections with large, often decorated capitals, and early printers kept the practice, sometimes leaving space for an initial to be added by hand. In modern books they are usually used at the start of a chapter, and they come in two main forms.
Two kinds of initial
A drop cap sits within the text block. It is set larger than the text and sinks down into the paragraph, so that the first few lines are indented to make room for it. A three-line drop cap occupies the depth of three lines of text.
A raised initial, sometimes called a stick-up initial, sits on the baseline of the first line and rises above it into the space over the paragraph. The lines below are not indented. It is simpler to set and tends to look lighter and more open.
Both are decorative, and both work best when they are done precisely or not at all.
Setting a drop cap well
The key to a good drop cap is alignment. The top of the initial should align with the cap height of the first line of text, and its baseline should sit exactly on the baseline of the last line it spans. If it is scaled slightly wrong, it will float above the first line or sit below the last, and the error is surprisingly visible.
The space to the right of the letter needs attention too. Letters have different shapes, and a drop cap A or L leaves a very different gap from an H or M. Software applies the same indent to every line, so some letters need a manual adjustment to make the text appear to sit at an even distance from the initial.
The letters that follow need to connect with it. A common convention is to set the rest of the first word, or the first few words, in small caps. This bridges the jump in scale between the large initial and the text, and it helps the reader read the initial as part of the word rather than as a separate ornament.
Awkward cases
Dialogue is the usual problem. If a chapter opens with a quotation mark, there is no single right answer. Some designers set the quotation mark at text size in the margin, some set it at the size of the initial, and some leave it out, though omitting it changes the text and should be agreed with the editor. Whatever the choice, it should be applied the same way throughout the book.
Very short first paragraphs cause trouble too. A three-line drop cap needs at least three lines of text beside it, or the initial hangs below the paragraph. If a chapter might open with a one-line paragraph, a raised initial or a smaller drop is safer.
Some letters, notably I and J, look thin or strange at large sizes, and some words begin with a letter that sits badly with the letter after it. Checking every chapter opening at proof stage is the only reliable approach.
The initial can be set in the text face or in a display or decorative face. Using the text face is the safer choice and usually looks more coherent. A contrasting face can work well, but it should share something with the text, such as its proportions or period, so that it looks chosen rather than borrowed.
In ebooks
Drop caps are unreliable in reflowable ebooks. Reading systems handle them differently, and when a reader changes the typeface or size, the alignment can break. Many ebook designers use a raised initial, small caps on the opening words, or no initial at all in the digital edition.
An initial letter should make a chapter feel like a beginning, and nothing more.