Just as :first-child affects only the first child of an element, :first-letter only affects the first letter inside the element. That's neat for large initials in documents and the like.
This is not really a pseudo class, it's an pseudo element, but that's semantics for most

p{
font-weight:500; color:black;
}

p:first-child{
font-weight:900;
}

p:first-letter{
font-weight:900;
font-size:2.9em;
line-height: 0.9em;
}

This is a div, that could be a chapter of a large document. There will follow two paragraphs (done with <p> in the code):

This is the first paragraph, and the idea is that in the whole document all first paragraphs of a chapter would be in bold (for whatever reason).

This is the second paragraph

and I just decided to add a third one ;-)