[Tex/LaTex] How to increase the size of first character in a chapter (Drop-Caps)

drop-caplettrineparagraphs

I would like to know how I can increase the size of the first alphabet of first paragraph of a chapter using (Xe/La/?)tex. Please look at the image shown below.

Image related to question

  1. What is such an effect called? How do I achieve it using Latex?

  2. Are there any special fonts to be used for this purpose that contain ornamental/decorative alphabet faces? Or can it be achieved by some manipulation of existing alphabet glyphs?

  3. I am not a designer. I know this site is focused on Tex and not typography but I'd appreciate any pointers to popular typeface combinations for this purpose with popular text faces. E.g. If I am using Adobe Garamond Pro as my text face, what would be a suitable type to use for such a first-alphabet-decoration?

  4. And finally (this question may tantamount to heresy here): Is there a way to do this in Microsoft Word / OpenOffice?

Best Answer

These are called dropcaps or lettrine (from the French). The best package to use is lettrine which is available from ctan.

Use as:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\begin{document}
    \lettrine{A}{gain find} more words her...
\end{document}

Here is the output:

Screenshot

They are very difficult to handle typographically, unless the whole page design has been developed with dropcaps incorporated. The modern trend is to use a sans serif font rather than a serified for the dropcap.

Can Microsoft do it? It can, but not recommended to be used for typesetting books.

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