Using Lettrine with short paragraphs

Question

I'm trying to create drop caps with the lettrine package, and I'm running into trouble when the first paragraph is too short. It appears that the package only indents the paragraph where it appears, with all lines on subsequent paragraphs being unaffected.

Here's a MWE:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{lettrine}

\begin{document}
\lettrine[lines=3]{T}{his} is a short paragraph.

This is a longer one, which fills all the lines taken up by the large letter, but unfortunately is not properly indented to accommodate that letter.
\end{document}

This yields the following bad result:

One solution would be to remove the paragraph break and instead use \\ \hspace*{\parindent}. Is there a more elegant, semantic solution?

Answer 1

Put \zz immediately before the following paragraph and it will extend the cutout if needed.

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{lmodern}

\newcount\zzc
\makeatletter
\def\zz{%
\ifnum\prevgraf<\c@L@lines
\zzc\z@
\loop
\ifnum\zzc<\prevgraf
\advance\zzc\@ne
\afterassignment\zzda\count@\L@parshape\relax
\repeat
\parshape\L@parshape
\fi}
\def\zzda{\afterassignment\zzdb\dimen@}
\def\zzdb{\afterassignment\zzdef\dimen@}
\def\zzdef#1\relax{\edef\L@parshape{\the\numexpr\count@-1\relax\space #1}}
\makeatother
\usepackage{lettrine}

\begin{document}




\lettrine[lines=3]{T}{his} is a short paragraph.

\zz
This is a longer one, which fills all the lines taken up by the large letter, but unfortunately is not properly indented to accommodate that letter.



\lettrine[lines=3]{T}{his} is not a short paragraph.
This is is not a short paragraph. This is is not a short paragraph.
This is is not a short paragraph. This is is not a short paragraph.
This is is not a short paragraph. This is is not a short paragraph.

\zz
This is a longer one, which fills all the lines taken up by the large letter, but unfortunately is not properly indented to accommodate that letter.
\end{document}

Answer 2

I once had a requirement to build multiple complicated parshapes, each of which had to span multiple paragraphs. I didn't want to define a parshape per paragraph, as that would have been a lot more work.

I don't remember anymore where this came from, I don't claim any credit for this, but you can actually "fake" a \par command by doing:

\def\Fpar{\hfil\vadjust{\vskip\parskip}\break\indent}

As lettrine seems to use \parshape internally, this solution also works for your requirement.

MWE:

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\def\Fpar{\hfil\vadjust{\vskip\parskip}\break\indent}
\begin{document}
\lettrine[lines=3]{T}{his} is a short paragraph.\Fpar
This is a longer one, which fills all the lines taken up by the large letter, but unfortunately is not properly indented to accommodate that letter.
\end{document}

Output:

The reason why this works seems to be that, while \Fpar produces the same document output as a \par would, it is not recognized by \parshape as being the end of a paragraph, and thus the \lettrine command has more text to work with.