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Some publishers (at least some French ones) use the following layout at the beginning of each chapter of a book.

The first line of the first paragraph appears in large font (say \Large) with no indentation. The second line is in smaller but still large font (say \large) the third line uses the normal font size but blackface. The special layout ends with line 4 (I assume here that the paragraph has at least four lines).

I have tried to devise how this could be achieved but I have only found (nice) things about lettrines.

I do not include a MWE since I have no clue where to begin and my MWE would be useless.

I am including an example of the layout taken from a book publised in 2012.

enter image description here

\documentclass[12pt,a5paper,french]{book}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel,microtype}
\UseMicrotypeSet[expansion]{alltext}
\frenchbsetup{StandardLayout=true,og= «,fg= »}
\pdfpagewidth=\paperwidth
\pdfpageheight=\paperheight
\begin{document}
\chapter{Le sang des terrassiers}

{\bfseries{\Large Métro, canaux, voies ferrées, tun-}{\large nels, les
    chantiers se multipliaient dans} la France de la Belle Époque, en
  milieu urbain comme en pleine nature, faisant partout surgir} les
terrassier ou «taupiers». Souvent fils de ruraux sans terre, ceux-ci
entraient dans le métier vers l’âge de seize ans. La Bretagne et
l’Auvergne fournissaient les plus gros contingents mais ils étaient
nombreux aussi à venir d’Italie. Les apprentis les plus jeunes, qu’on
appelait «les mousses», n’avaient pas plus de quatorze ans.
\end{document}
Thérèse
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Denis
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    this answer deals with the first line only. the documention for the magaz package that it mentions says that "maybe" special formatting might be addressed for the first n lines (but the package is dated 2011). however, the author is still active, and it might be worth asking him. – barbara beeton Mar 26 '18 at 15:25
  • @barbarabeeton Thanks indeed for the pointer. I'll have a look. – Denis Mar 27 '18 at 13:14
  • @barbarabeeton magaz works well for the first line. I have no clue on what to do for the second or third lines. Does the "maybe" in the documentation means "not for now". – Denis Mar 27 '18 at 14:45
  • I have a pretty large collection of French books but I’ve never seen this. Do you have an image you could share, or can you point to a particular publisher’s catalog? – Thérèse Mar 27 '18 at 14:48
  • @Thérèse I'll dig in my library. But I have not invented the layout. – Denis Mar 27 '18 at 15:18
  • I don’t suspect you of inventing it, but I’m having trouble picturing it. And I’m a little confused, because you have this question tagged “lettrine” but what you describe seems not to use lettrines. – Thérèse Mar 27 '18 at 15:22
  • @Denis -- that's why i suggested asking the author; the address in the package documentation was still valid earlier this year. – barbara beeton Mar 27 '18 at 15:27
  • I have added an image with the layout I had in mind. It took me some time to find an example. Also, yes, I might contact Danald Arseneau, the author of magaz. – Denis Mar 29 '18 at 06:09
  • @Thérèse Sorry this is not what I intended to mean. – Denis Mar 29 '18 at 06:20
  • I’ve added an example for you, meant to work with pdftex. I assume your question is how to do this automatically instead of by trial-and-error. In luatex, I think this could be done with a callback, but my lua skills aren’t yet sufficient. – Thérèse Mar 29 '18 at 18:15

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