How do I use dropcaps (or initial letters) in my book?

Two themes in Pressbooks offer an automatic dropcap style. These are:

• Cleary
• Leonard

Two other themes also have an optional dropcap style that can be added using the method explained in the next section. These are:

• Austen
• Christie

Adding Dropcaps Manually

In some cases, the dropcap will not appear automatically in your PDF or ebook outputs. There are a few things that can cause this:

• If a chapter begins with a blockquote, heading, image or other device it can prevent the system from recognising the first body paragraph of the chapter
• Some import options bring in stray code that can interfere with the style applying correctly
• Some themes do not default to displaying a dropcap, but it is an option if added manually

If your dropcap isn't appearing automatically, or you'd like to add it somewhere else in your text (e.g. after a section break) you can easily add it by following the steps below:

1. In your chapter editor, switch to the text editor
2. Wrap the first character of the first paragraph in tags as follows:

This is my first sentence.

3. Save and export to see the changes.

Example of dropcap code added to the first paragraph of a chapter