In a written or published work, an initial 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 derived from , 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. There are certain important initials, such as the Beatus initial, or B, of at the opening of Psalm 1 at the start of a Vulgate (Bible). These specific initials in an illuminated manuscript were also called (: '). History The classical tradition was slow to use capital letters for initials at all; in surviving Roman texts it often is difficult even to separate the words as spacing was not used either. In late antiquity (–6th century) both came into common use in Italy, the initials usually were set in the left margin (as in the second example below), as though to cut them off from the rest of the text, and about twice as tal ...