Initial

For other uses, see Initial (disambiguation).
A large letter O in a frame. At the centre of the letter, there is an illustration of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone.
A historiated initial (the letter O) from an illuminated manuscript

In a written or published work, an initial[a] is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word is ultimately derived from the Latin initiālis, which means of the beginning. An initial is often several lines in height, and, in older books or manuscripts, may take the form of an inhabited or historiated initial. Certain important initials, such as the Beatus initial, or B, of Beatus vir... at the opening of Psalm 1 at the start of a vulgate Latin. These specific initials in an illuminated manuscript were also called initia (singular: initium).
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