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Widows and orphans
By Lukas · updated
Two old typesetters’ words for two related faults: a single line of a paragraph cut off from the rest by a page break. Readers rarely notice them as such, but the page looks unfinished all the same.
Which is which
An orphan is the first line of a paragraph left alone at the bottom of a page, with the rest of the paragraph overleaf. A widow is the last line of a paragraph left alone at the top of the next page, often just a word or two. Style guides don’t all agree on the names (some swap them, and some call a single short word on a paragraph’s last line a widow too), but the fix is the same either way.
Why they bother readers
You see a page as a block before you read it, and a lone line at either edge breaks the block. The orphan is the milder one, since you turn the page and carry on. The widow is worse: the top of the page starts with the tail of a sentence whose beginning is on the other side of the leaf, and the next paragraph starts right under it.
How typesetters fix them
The cleanest fix is to make a paragraph earlier on the page one line longer or shorter. It is easiest with a paragraph whose last line has a single word: a different hyphenation or slightly tighter word spacing pulls it back into the line above, and typesetters make such changes too small to see. As the author you have one more option: rewrite a sentence.
The other way is to run both pages of a spread one line long or one line short. Nobody notices as long as the left and right pages end level.
Changing the line spacing on one page isn’t a fix. The lines no longer back up with the lines on the other side of the leaf, and on thin book paper that shows through.
What Word does
Word’s Widow/Orphan control (Paragraph › Line and Page Breaks) is on by default. For an orphan it moves the lone line to the next page, for a widow it moves one more line with it, so that page ends a line early while the one facing it doesn’t. You end up with many spreads whose pages stop at different heights. That beats a widow, but it isn’t book typesetting.
A related fault is a heading at the foot of a page with its text on the next one. Word’s “Keep with next” prevents that, and it is already on in the built-in heading styles, which is one more reason to use them instead of making headings bold and big by hand.
And Kernsetzer?
Kernsetzer leaves no single line of a paragraph at the top or bottom of a page and keeps headings with their text, without a setting to turn on. The first look shows what its pages look like.