WORD – Drop Caps

[NOVICE] Are you looking for easy ways to add style to your documents? Maybe you’ve used graphics or bullets, but your text needs to be taken up a notch?

One cool technique is to use Drop Caps to emphasize main paragraphs. A Drop Cap is a large capital letter that appears at the beginning of a line of text. It “hangs” or “drops” from the top of its own line down several rows below to begin the paragraph with a real punch.

Drop caps can be used for the first letter in a:

• Book chapter
• Article
• Flyer
• Almost any text that needs a little pizzazz

When used sparingly, Drop Caps make a good visual break for the reader of the document.

Insert A Drop Cap

In Microsoft Word, adding a Drop Cap is a snap.

1. First, highlight the character that you want to turn into a Drop Cap
2. Choose Format, Drop Cap
3. In the Dialog box you can choose the:

• Position: Dropped (the text wraps around the letter), or In Margin (the text moves to the right side of the letter)
• Font (try choosing a decorative, fancy font)
• Number of Lines to drop (the default is three; adding more lines makes the capital letter larger
• Distance from text (the default is “0,” — adding tenths of an inch moves all the text farther away from the letter itself)
• Click OK to apply the Drop Cap

NOTE: To return the Drop Cap to a normal character, follow steps 1-2 and choose: None.

TIP: When a Drop Cap is created, Word puts it into a text box. You can then format the Drop Cap as you would in a regular text box: move, resize, color, border or background color. There are lots of visually appealing possibilities!

Example: