Tricks with Drop Caps

InDesign's drop cap feature can be used for more than just drop caps at the beginning of articles or sections. Here are a few ideas for other uses that can be great time savers when included as part of a paragraph style definition.

Figure 10.13. Drop caps used for question and answer section. In this example a tab stop has been set to push the question text away from the Q, the baseline of the Q has been raised by 1 point.

Figure 10.14. Words used as drop caps. Because of the repetition in this example, it's possible to make a paragraph style with the drop cap character count set to 11. The drop cap character style that is nested in the paragraph style includes a small amount of baseline shift as well as changing the Character Color to a 50 percent tint. For the last paragraph, the drop cap is modified locally.

Figure 10.15. Drop caps used for numbers in a contents page.