How to Create a Drop Cap

byphil1944

8.6K followers

2 years ago

How to Create a Drop Cap

I don't know if this is of general interest or not, but someone who downloaded one of my e-books asked how I created the drop caps that I use at the start of each chapter.

For example:

The first "G", of course, is the drop cap.

Drop Caps have been around for centuries and pre-date the printing press.

They are most often found in print books and I think they give a professional look to your work.

They are very easy to do if you are using Word as your source document. They are also supported by some of the free alternatives to Word.

(I create all my e-books in Word and then save them as PDFs for website publishing and customer download).

Here's how to do a drop cap in Word:

(1) Place the cursor in front of the letter to be dropped.

Note that the cursor is in front of the "G".

(2) In the Insert group, select Drop Cap.

(3) Select Dropped from the options.

(4) This will drop the capital letter 3 lines by default.

(5) You can change this by clicking on Drop Cap Options.

(6) Here, I've changed it to drop 5 lines instead of 3, giving:

The drop cap is preserved when you save your Word doc as a PDF.

So... a very simple way to add a touch of class to your printed words.