Drop cap or initial is a letter at the beginning of a work, a chapter or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word comes from the Latin initialis, which means standing at the beginning. It is often several lines in height and in older books or manuscripts ornately decorated.

Manuscripts had initials with images inside them, like those illustrated here, are known as historiated initials; they were an invention of the Insular art of the British Isles in the 8th century. Initials containing, typically, plant-form spirals with small figures of animals or men.

With a drop cap, the initial sits within the margins and runs several lines deep into the paragraph, pushing some normal-sized text off these lines. This keeps the left and top margins of the paragraph flush. In modern browsers, this can be done with a combination of HTML & CSS.

The classical tradition was late to use capital letters for initials at all; in surviving Roman texts it is often very hard to even separate the words as spacing was not used either. In the Late Antique period both came into in common use in Italy, the initials usually set in the left margin (as in the second example below).

In traditional typography, text is composed to create a readable, coherent, and visually satisfying whole that works invisibly, without the awareness of the reader. Even distribution of typeset material, with a minimum of distractions and anomalies, is aimed at producing clarity and transparency.

First of three columns

A column in structural engineering is a vertical structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below.

Second column

Other compression members are often termed "columns" because of the similar stress conditions. Columns are frequently used to support beams or arches on which the upper parts of walls.

Third column

In architecture "column" refers to such a structural element that also has certain proportional and decorative features.