In a written or published work, an initial is a letter at the beginning of a work, a chapter, or a paragraph that is larger than the rest of the text. The word is derived from the Latin initialis, which means standing at the beginning. An initial often is several lines in height and in older books or manuscripts, sometimes ornately decorated.

In illuminated manuscripts, initials with images inside them, such as those illustrated here, are known as historiated initials. They were an invention of the Insular art of the British Isles in the eighth century. Initials containing, typically, plant-form spirals with small figures of animals or humans that do not represent a specific person or scene are known as "inhabited" initials. Certain important initials, such as the B of Beatus vir ... at the opening of Psalm 1 at the start of a vulgate Latin psalter, could occupy a whole page of a manuscript.

These specific initials, in an illuminated manuscript, also were called Initiums.

The classical tradition was late 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 the Late Antique period both came into in common use in Italy, the initials usually were set in the left margin (as in the third example below), as though to cut them off from the rest of the text, and about twice as tall as the other letters. The radical innovation of insular manuscripts was to make initials much larger, not indented, and for the letters immediately following the initial also to be larger, but diminishing in size (called the "diminuendo" effect, after the musical notation). Subsequently they became larger still, coloured, and penetrated farther and farther into the rest of the text, until the whole page might be taken over.

Hugh Michael Jackman (born 12 October 1968) is an Australian actor and producer who is involved in film, musical theatre, and television.

Jackman has won international recognition for his roles in major films, notably as action/superhero, period and romance characters. He is known for his role as Wolverine in the X-Men film series, as well as for his leads in Kate & Leopold, Van Helsing, The Prestige, Australia, and Real Steel. Jackman is a singer, dancer, and actor in stage musicals, and won a Tony Award for his role in The Boy from Oz.

In November 2008, Open Salon named Jackman one of the sexiest men alive. Later that same month, People magazine named Jackman "Sexiest Man Alive."

A three-time host of the Tony Awards, winning an Emmy Award for one of these appearances, Jackman also hosted the 81st Academy Awards on 22 February 2009.

Jackman was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the youngest of five children of English parents Chris Jackman and Grace Watson, and the second child to be born in Australia (he also has a younger half-sister, from his mother's re-marriage). One of his paternal great-grandfathers was Greek. His parents divorced when he was eight, and he remained with his accountant father and siblings, while his mother moved back to England. As a child, Jackman liked the outdoors, spending a lot of time at the beach and on camping trips and vacations all over Australia. He wanted to see the world: "I used to spend nights looking at atlases. I decided I wanted to be a chef on a plane. Because I'd been on a plane and there was food on board, I presumed there was a chef. I thought that would be an ideal job."