Drop Caps & Raised Letters

Want to add some flair to your documents? Learn how and when to use drop caps and raised letters to give your work a distinctive look that works well in many kinds of projects.

The first thing to be aware of in regards to drop caps is that they are a very powerful tool for attracting the reader's eye. That said, avoid over-using them. Most often you would use these tools only once on a given page. Usually, you would use these devices to start new chapters in a book, or to start new sections in a brochure or report.

Here's some samples:

Creating drop caps and raised letters can either be very straightforward or can be very difficult. Packages such as Adobe InDesign offer automatic functions that will let you create automatic drop caps, while it can be a real challenge in some other packages. After learning how to create drop caps and raised letters, don't be afraid to try them out. For instance, drop caps are virtually impossible to create in most word processing packages while raised letters, while possible, are still a challenge as the larger initial letter often changes the leading for the first line. When this happens, you'll often have more space between the first two lines of text than between the other lines in the paragraph. In this case, you must manually change the leading between the first lines to match the rest of the paragraph. This can be accomplished in your "leading" or "line spacing" settings.

After learning how to create drop caps and raised letters, don't be afraid to try them out. For more ideas on how to use them, flip through some hardcover books at your local bookstore or library to see some samples. These tools can be one of the easiest ways to add a distinctive touch to your typesetting and desktop publishing projects.

We strive to be as accurate and current with our information as possible. Due to the infinite number of scenarios that occur in print & desktop publishing, we can not guarantee that the above information will be correct in all situations.