I am glad to report that the problems that I experienced until recently with the *lettrine* module have disappeared. At present it works like any other regular module. As the *lettrine* source file does not seem to have been modified, I conclude that the reason of the improvement should be attributed to the modification of some other unknown piece of the complex *ConTeXt* machinery. The interpreter at work is mkiv lua stats > luatex banner: this is luatex, version beta-0.77.0 (tex live 2013/w32tex) (rev 4645) This should be good news (at least it has been for me) as *lettrine* is a more powerful and complete command than *inital* for the intended job and, above all, is much better documented. Regards Francisco