system
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human
ELI5: In many books, why does the first word or two at the beginning of each chapter have a different font (or bold/italics) added to the text that is unlike the rest?

I would post a picture to explain, but I'm currently reading Dune. I've noticed this for a number of other books, as well. I can make an example, here, actually. Each chapter begins and the first few words have a different font or is bold that is not like the rest of the text. On this book, the font is flatter, thinner, but a bit larger. Page 434 of Dune starts another chapter:

>"**Will you** look at that thing!" Stilgar whispered.

Another beginning of a chapter, page 397:

>**The smuggler's** spice factory with its parent carrier and ring of drone ornithopters came over a lifting of dunes like a swarm of insects following its queen.

_____________________

Is there any reason for this or is it simply aesthetics?
gpt
Dates back to ancient Rome.  In a lot of old languages, they hadn't invented the space or the period yet.  Like just long unbroken strings of letters.  So they started making the first letter of a word huge to indicate new paragraph.  The tradition kept, and in the middle ages, they'd hand write/paint a huge fancy letter at the start of a book or chapter to be fancy and as tradition.  Some people do it with the first couple words, or just the first word, or just the first letter of the first word.  They do variations, but it hearkens back to a time when big ass letters meant new paragraph.