Drop Caps in QuarkXPress

Styling drop caps for your intro­duc­to­ry para­graphs using QuarkXPress is straight­for­ward; the trick here is know­ing where to find the place where it’s spe­fi­cied. As it hap­pens, it’s in the Paragraph Attributes dia­log box.

Place your inser­tion point into the para­graph you want a drop cap in. Bring up the Format pane of the Paragraph Attrbutes box (Mac: CMD-SHIFT‑F, Win: ALT-SHIFT‑F, or Menu: Style>Formats), check the box next to “Drop Caps” to acti­vate that sec­tion of the pane. Place the num­ber of char­ac­ters you want to involve in the “Character Count” box and the height you want in the “Line Count” box, then click either “Apply” or “OK” to effect the change.