First letter cutting off in excerpt

Question

I'm using a plugin to allow for dropcaps for the first letter in my Wordpress theme. However, the excerpt is cutting off the first letter. For example, a sentence like: "This is a Wordpress install" would display on the front page as "his is a Wordpress install".

I tried stripping out the strip_shortcodes section of the formatting.php but now there is a space before and after the letter so it displays as: " T his is a Wordpress install".

Does anyone know how to either a) make it display the drop cap or b)show the letter normally?

function wp_trim_excerpt($text = '') {
$raw_excerpt = $text;
if ( '' == $text ) {
    $text = get_the_content('');
    //$text = strip_shortcodes( $text );
    $text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
    $text = str_replace(']]>', ']]>', $text);
    $excerpt_length = apply_filters('excerpt_length', 55);
    $excerpt_more = apply_filters('excerpt_more', ' ' . '[...]');
    $text = wp_trim_words( $text, $excerpt_length, $excerpt_more );
}
return apply_filters('wp_trim_excerpt', $text, $raw_excerpt);

}

Answer 1

I'm going to give you a hard-coded solution to this problem, rather than using a plugin. If you're heart is set on a plugin that is fine - but this short code is rather simple and hopefully helpful for your purposes.

This code is basically just adding a CSS class to a shortcode.

First, deactivate that plugin.

Paste this in functions.php

// Shortcode: Drop cap
add_shortcode('dropcap', 'dropcap');
function dropcap($atts, $content = null) {
   extract(shortcode_atts(array('link' => '#'), $atts));
   return '<span class="dropcap">' . do_shortcode($content) . '</span>';
}

Use it like this:

[dropcap]K[/dropcap]

Then style it however you please in your stylesheet:

.dropcap { 
    font-size:50px;
}