It took me quite a while to hunt this down... The use of a text background breaks \placeinitial.
I do not have a patch, but at least can provide a minimal example: \definetextbackground [SetOff] [location=paragraph] \starttext \placeinitial \input tufte \startSetOff \input ward \stopSetOff \stoptext ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________