Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Creating a Drop Cap.

Creating a Drop Cap

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated April 29, 2017)

Drop caps are a decorative touch, done through typographical means, that you can apply to your document. Drop caps are traditionally done with the first letter of a chapter or some other major section of a document. To create drop caps, do the following:

Type your paragraph as you normally would.
Select the first letter of the paragraph.
Choose Drop Cap from the Format menu. Word displays the Drop Cap dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Drop Cap dialog box.

Chose the position for your drop cap, according to your preference.
Change any other options to format your drop cap.
Click on OK.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1818) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Creating a Drop Cap.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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