W3C CSS2 Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 - instructional media + ...

The following CSS2 will make a drop cap initial letter span two lines:
Drop cap initial letter
P { font-size: 12pt; line-height: 12pt }
P:first-letter { font-size: 200%; font-style: italic;
font-weight: bold; float: left }
SPAN { text-transform: uppercase }
The first few words of an article
in The Economist.
This example might be formatted as follows:
HE FIRST few
T words of an
article in the
Economist
The fictional tag sequence is:
T
he first
few words of an article in the Economist.
Note that the :first-letter pseudo-element tags abut the content (i.e., the initial
character), while the :first-line pseudo-element start tag is inserted right after the
start tag of the element to which it is attached.
In order to achieve traditional drop caps formatting, user agents may approximate
font sizes, for example to align baselines. Also, the glyph outline may be
taken into account when formatting.
Punctuation (i.e, characters defined in Unicode [UNICODE] in the "open" (Ps),
"close" (Pe), and "other" (Po) punctuation classes), that precedes the first letter
should be included, as in:
in
the hand
"Abird
is worth
two in the bush,"
says an old proverb.
The :first-letter pseudo-element matches parts of block-level [p. 97] elements
only.
Some languages may have specific rules about how to treat certain letter
combinations. In Dutch, for example, if the letter combination "ij" appears at the
beginning of a word, both letters should be considered within the :first-letter
pseudo-element.
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