Name for first letter of a sentence and the first letter of a word

Question

Is there a word for the first letter of a sentence (i in this sentence)?
Is there a word for the first letter of each word in a sentence (itawftfloewias in this case)?
I understand that as terms, this could be described as an acrostic for the former, and an acrostic, acronym or an initialism for the latter case, but I'm wondering if this can describe the letters themselves, or just the subsequent output. edit: Please note that this is not the answer, just a suggestion, and it isn't correct use of these terms
My best guess would be initial for the latter, but I have no idea for the former - maybe acrostic would be a good choice

linguisticturn · Accepted Answer

Since EL&U prefers to have answers as answers rather than have them buried in the comments, I will here repeat a suggestion I made in the comments that the OP liked.
While initial does not by default describe the first letter of anything except names (and also the large letter beginning a text or a division or paragraph), I think it would be OK to say, somewhere in your text, 'I am going to use the term the sentence initial to refer to the first letter of a sentence, and the initials of the sentence to refer to the first letters of the words in a sentence.'
There are many variations on this general theme possible, e.g. word initial, as the OP themself suggested in a comment.

Glorfindel · Answer

Initial is actually also used for the first case, especially when referring to elaborated letters in historical books, like this capital O:

from Princeton, Public Domain, Link

Name for first letter of a sentence and the first letter of a word

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