Adding Drop Caps

A drop cap is created by "notching" a paragraph's first letter ‚ or letters ‚ into the upper-left corner of the paragraph. Drop caps are often used to embellish the first paragraph of a story, to draw attention to paragraphs, and to interrupt the grayness in columns of text. In the Paragraph pane or Control palette, InDesign lets you specify the number of letters you want to include in a drop cap and the number of lines you want to notch them.

To add one or more drop caps to selected paragraphs, enter a number in the Drop Cap Number field in the Paragraph pane or Control palette. That's how many characters will be made into drop caps. To specify the number of lines a drop cap will extend into a paragraph, enter a value in the Drop Cap Depth field.

After you've created a drop cap, you can modify it by highlighting it and then changing any of its character formats ‚ font, size , color , and so on ‚ using the Character pane or Control palette, as well as other panes (such as Stroke and Swatches). Figure 18-3 shows some examples of drop caps.

Figure 18-3: The drop cap in the top-left example has a one-character drop cap three lines deep. The bottom-left paragraph has a two-line , four-character drop cap. In the top-right example, the font size of a one-letter, four-line drop cap has been enlarged to raise it above the first line of text. In the bottom-left example, a Left Indent value combined with a negative First-Line Indent value produced the one-character, three-line drop cap's hanging indent.

A handy way to apply these settings is to use the Drop Cap & Nested Styles option in the Paragraph pane's or Control palette's palette menu. You can also use the shortcut Option+ z +R or Ctrl+Alt+R. Figure 18-4 shows the dialog box.

Figure 18-4: The new Drop Caps & Nested Styles dialog box.

New Feature ‚  

Nested styles are new to InDesign CS.

With this dialog box, you can set a character style that is applied to the paragraph. You can also use it to apply another character style to other text in the paragraph. To do so, click New Nested Style, then choose from the three pop-up menus to specify how the style is to be applied. The first pop-up menu lets you choose Through or Up To, the second the number of elements to apply the style through or up to, and the third pop-up menu lets you determine what elements you're using, as the figure shows.

Cross-Reference ‚  

Because this feature is most useful when coupled with a paragraph style sheet ( otherwise , it's easier to simply highlight some text in a paragraph and apply a character style to it), Chapter 20 covers nested styles in more detail.