drop capital (or drop cap) is a printer’s term for those larger sized letters you often see embedded at the start of a magazine or newspaper article. As here! They represent the initial letter of the text, but are usually several sizes larger than the surrounding text. They can also be in a completely different font and sometimes are embellished and decorated in unique ways.
They date back to the days of illustrated manuscripts, when the initial letter of the page or passage was sometimes decorated as an illustration of the subject of the text.
My reason for wanting drop caps on my homepage is simple. Some of the pieces I publish on this site, especially in the Articulations catagory which contains my works of fiction and poetry, have illustrations. Either they are too short to warrent an illustration, or I simply don’t have something available. Instead of leaving them with no decoration, I think a drop cap will make them more attractive.
I could be wrong, of course, but appropriate decoration is a very subjective matter. You’re welcome to drop me line of comment about this.
The complete set of my drop caps are below. If you want to use them yourself in a non-commercial blog, please contact me. Likewise, if you’d like me to make a set of drop caps for you (at a price :)).
Alternatively, an impressive and beautiful range of Creative Commons licensed drop caps can be accessed at the DailyDropCap site. Highly recommended!
