Initial
In a written or published work, an initial or drop cap is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word is comes from the Latin initialis, which means standing at the beginning. An initial is often several lines in height and in older books or manuscripts. In some cases a name or title can be long so the initials would shorten them.
Examples include: JFK, FDR, AOC, TDK, NYC, USA, KUWTK, EU, etc.
Initial Media
A historiated initial (the letter O) from an illuminated manuscript
A set of sixteenth-century initial capitals
Inhabited initial E from an Italian breviary, 1153 AD, Los Angeles, Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig IX 1 (83.ML.97), fol. 331v
The letter P as a historiated initial (depicting Peter) in an illuminated Latin bible, 1407 AD. Colored with paint and gold leaf
The oldest historiated initial known, the St Petersburg Bede, 8th century
Greek biblical text from Papyrus 46, of c. 200, with no initials, punctuation, and barely spaces between words
5th century Codex Alexandrinus with initials in left margin
Leaf from a Coptic manuscript, 6th-14th century, Metropolitan museum of Art, New-York
"Diminuendo" effect in the first letters after this initial from the Cathach of St. Columba (Irish, 7th century)
One of thousands of smaller decorated initials from the Book of Kells
Related pages
Other websites
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lua error in Module:Commons_link at line 62: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).. |
- Typolis.de
- Types of illuminated initials in the Glossary of Medieval Art and Architecture
- Ornamento Archived 2020-11-25 at the Wayback Machine Ornamento contains close to a quarter of a million ornate letters, ornaments, borders, musical notation, diagrams, and illustrations drawn from Iberian print before 1701.
- Initials and Ornaments by Book Historian on Flickr.com
- Alphabets & Letters at Reusableart.com
