Can I add Drop Caps to my manuscript in the Storyist program?

Not quite, you can add Drop Caps to the CSS of the ePub file that Storyist generates for you

This Storyist forum gives an example of how to modify the CSS for your .ePub file (which is just a zip that you can unzip to see the individual files) to add Drop Caps:

Adding drop caps to the start of a paragraph

Another popular modification is to add drop caps to the first letter in a chapter. There are several ways to achieve this. If you're targeting iPad, the simplest way is to use the first-letter pseudo-class CSS selector as follows:

h1 > p:first-of-type::first-letter {
  font-size: 5em;
  float:left;
  line-hight: 0.5;
}

As the author mentions you should be comfortable with manually overwriting the CSS from the ePub file and you should check the result on the different readers where you intend to publish your work.

This is basically a workaround to change the standard layout in a not-intended way to match your specific preferences.

But beware that this seems to be discouraged by the community. See for example this Storyist forum (emphasis mine):

Unlike a print book with a set interior design, the point of eBooks is to be easy for the readers to manipulate for themselves. So the best eBook "formatting" is, in fact, doing as little hard formatting as possible—don't embed fonts, don't use drop caps, all the things that you' do in print. Keep your eBooks clean. Because not only does every reader like things differently, but different eReaders display things differently, too. So my Kindle Paperwhite uses a different font than iBooks, etc. And that's okay.

The standard doesn't allow this. There is no documentation for Storyist that would suggest that there is an in-built feature to change this setting and this StackExchange question is the first thing I can find when I google "Storyist Drop Caps", which suggests that there is not a high demand for this sort of workaround. Use with care.

posted about 6 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

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