Inspiring

Answered

Get text to wrap around a drop cap

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
November 3, 2020
2 replies
4598 views

I want to use large drop caps in a document, but the text doesn't wrap around the letter, as I'd like. (See image.) Is there a way to get the text to wrap correctly?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Scott Falkner

You'll need to make the drop cap a separate object and apply text wrap to that object. Easiest way would be select the drop cap, convert it to paths (this will make it an anchored object), de-anchor the drop cap, then apply text wrap.

Select the drop cap.
Press Command-Option-O or Control-Alt-O. (This will convert the letter to an anchored object.)
Select the letter then go to Anchored Object Options. Set its positioning to Custom. (Until you do that you cannot release it so it is no longer an anchored object).
Remove the drop cap from the paragraph.
Select the drop cap and go to Object > Anchored Object > Release.
Apply text wrap.

Susan CulliganAuthor

Inspiring

Hi Scott. I did what you described, and it worked almost perfectly. The issues are:

1. The text abuts the "T" with no space in between (see first image).

2. I add 3 pixels of space (see second image) and align to the right side. All the selections except the first are grayed out, so I could only apply surrounding space to all sides.

3. The text wraps all wonky (technical term) (see third image).

I thought it might be that the text is aligned to the baseline, but removing that didn't make a difference

I see in the image you posted that you were able to apply space to the right, left, and above, but not the bottom, which looks perfect.

Any ideas?

FRIdNGE

Inspiring

… Something funny and quick I wrote for a client some months ago!

(^/) The Jedi

R

rubylith

New Participant

Is this script available somewhere? I have been searching for a solution to wrap body text around a drop cap like this without manual kerning and converting the text to a shape.

Scott FalknerCorrect answer

Community Expert

You'll need to make the drop cap a separate object and apply text wrap to that object. Easiest way would be select the drop cap, convert it to paths (this will make it an anchored object), de-anchor the drop cap, then apply text wrap.

Select the drop cap.
Press Command-Option-O or Control-Alt-O. (This will convert the letter to an anchored object.)
Select the letter then go to Anchored Object Options. Set its positioning to Custom. (Until you do that you cannot release it so it is no longer an anchored object).
Remove the drop cap from the paragraph.
Select the drop cap and go to Object > Anchored Object > Release.
Apply text wrap.

Susan CulliganAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you so much for your reply, Scott. I will do this. It seems like this
should be in the design of the product. But we can't have everything, I
guess.

Much appreciated,
Susan

[Private info removed by Moderator]

A

Anonymous

Quote: " It seems like this should be in the design of the product."

Yes, it would be nice to have, but I believe it would be extremely difficult or impossible for any program to do. When the drop cap character is live text, it's identified to the program by the amount of horizontal space it is allocated, and that's what we see in our designs: that's the white block that the remaining body text wraps around.

In order to dected the exact shape of the letter, as you want with the P, the drop cap would need to be a computer object (rather than a character of live text) in order to detect its specific shape.

Maybe some day in the future a programmer will figure out a way to detect the shape of an individual live character of text, but I wouldn't hold my breath for this development.

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