Pages Drop Caps don't bottom align

Question

Pages Drop Caps don't bottom align

When I specify a Drop Cap in Pages (specified as 1 character, 3 lines in this case), the letter does not bottom align with the baseline of the third line (it's 5 points above the baseline). If I try to correct using a baseline shift on the Drop Cap, the fourth line is pushed to the right to align horizontally with the right edge of the drop cap (it should stay aligned to the left margin ).

I just discovered that if I set the leading (linespacing) to Lines (1.5) rather than using Exact (18 pts), the Drop Caps align properly. So apparently, Drop Caps don't work with exact leading measurements. Anyone had to deal with this before? It's a pain for me because I want to use Exact leading measurements. But who knows what the 1.5 means when applied to 11 point type. 16.5?

I'm using Pages 14.1

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Jul 21, 2024 9:55 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 22, 2024 4:45 AM in response to the-design-guy2

Here is what I produced using Baskerville Regular 12 pt in a blank template with spacing set to exactly 14 pt and zero character spacing or baseline shift. Used the default, single character drop cap and 3 lines specified. The zoom is 150.

That appears aligned to the baseline on the third line to me. The same result using Cormorant Garamond (Open Type Postscript) and no changes to any settings from the above:

Tested: Pages v13.1 on macOS Monterey 12.7.5 (Intel). I will test this on v14.1 on Sonoma 14.5 in a few minutes.

Since Apple and the Pages product team do not participate here, and if you still believe this is an issue, you might consider sending feedback directly to the product team from the Pages application menu.

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Answer 2

Jul 22, 2024 12:02 PM in response to the-design-guy2

Set the Exactly spacing to + 2 pts greater than your document font setting and the drop cap will align correctly with the bottom of the third line. I used Times at 16 pt and set the Exactly value to 18 pt and it worked perfectly with the drop cap default as you can see below. This time, it was Pages v14.1 on Ventura 13.6.7.

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Answer 3

Jul 22, 2024 9:06 PM in response to VikingOSX

The mystery deepens...

Thank you for your efforts VikingOSX! I really appreciate you looking into this. I must have some different setting on my computer as I continue to get the same results even with changing the "Exactly" setting for the drop cap (I'm assuming you left the setting unchanged for the rest of the paragraph). Interestingly, if I set the spacing to "At Least" instead of "Exactly", the bottom seems to align and the paragraph leading doesn't seem to change. I'm just not sure what "At Least" really means...or the "Between" option either.

In any case, I lucked out that setting the spacing to 1.5 lines gave me the 18 pt. leading I was looking for so I was at least able to finish the job I was working on.

Just for the record, here are some of the results I got by changing the spacing of the drop cap character. The two examples at the very bottom show what happens when I change the spacing of the entire paragraph. At 12 pts, (which I think is Apple's default setting for 11 pt. type), the drop cap seems fine. At smaller spacing settings, the drop cap dips below the intended baseline. The results were consistent with all the fonts I tried. This one is Bodoni 72.

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Answer 4

Jul 22, 2024 5:02 AM in response to VikingOSX

And I got the same result with the same data as my previous post when using Pages v14.1 on macOS Sonoma 14.5.

Baskerville

Cormorant Garamond

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Answer 5

Jul 22, 2024 10:46 AM in response to VikingOSX

Well that's odd. Thank you for your efforts. Here's what I am seeing. I'm using Times Roman although I tried with Garamond and got the same result. BTW, I'm running Ventura 13.6.7.

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Answer 6

Jul 23, 2024 5:45 AM in response to the-design-guy2

You can imagine how much fun it was to produce credible drop caps before Apple implemented this feature. Far more hair-pulling finesse. An example done back in Pages v8.2:

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