Reply To: Drop cap inside a box

cdweeks’ solution is indeed brilliant. (I mean the first post. His/Her second post was written as I was writing this.) I played around with it a bit and was able to make the underline wider by specifying that the drop cap (in the paragraph style definition) should be three characters rather than just one. I then placed a hair space either side of the first character and, since the underline description in the dropcap character style applies to all three “characters” (ie., includes the two hair spaces), it seemed to achieve the result you wanted.

I see three minor problems with this technique:

1. I can’t see any automated way to insert the hair spaces, whereas the paragraph style definition automates the rest of it. Perhaps those skilled at grep can come up with one but I freely admit to being a grep ignoramus.
2. Inserting those hair spaces, specifically the right-hand one, probably leads to a mis-spelled first word of the paragraph — no big deal but a little annoying.
3. I would wish for some way to have a little bit of white space to the right of the coloured box. As it is, the next letter of that first word and, of course, the first letter of the first word on the second and third lines (and however many lines your drop cap covers) are hard up against the coloured box.

All that aside, I think the look is pretty cool. As well as defining the colour of the dropcap character style as “paper”, I gave it a 0.25pt black stroke which I think sets it off more cleanly against the orange background.