Typesetting

Widows and orphans

A widow is the last line of a paragraph stranded alone at the top of a page. An orphan is the first line stranded alone at the bottom of the previous one. Both are considered faults in book typesetting, and both are among the most visible signs that a book was not typeset.

The terms are constantly swapped, including by people who set type professionally. The distinction below is the standard one.

What they look like

Two pages showing an orphan and a widow On the left-hand page, a single line sits alone at the very bottom — the first line of a paragraph that continues overleaf. That is an orphan. On the right-hand page, a single line sits alone at the very top — the last line of the paragraph that began on the previous page. That is a widow. ORPHAN first line, left behind WIDOW last line, carried over
An orphan is the first line of a paragraph stranded at the foot of a page. A widow is its last line stranded at the top of the next. The mnemonic: an orphan has no past, a widow has no future.

Both faults happen at a page break, and both are invisible in a manuscript — they only appear once the text has been paginated into fixed pages. That is why they are the last thing you fix and the first thing a reader notices.

How to fix them

In order of preference. The earlier fixes are invisible to a reader; the later ones are visible but acceptable.

  1. Reword. Cut or add a few words so the paragraph runs a line shorter or longer. This is the typesetter's normal fix and it is entirely invisible — but it means changing the author's words, so on your own book it is available and on someone else's it is not.
  2. Track the paragraph. Tighten or loosen the letter-spacing of that one paragraph by a very small amount — a few thousandths of an em. Beyond about ±10 units it starts to show.
  3. Run the page short. Let one page of a spread end a line early. Both pages of a spread should still end at the same depth where possible.
  4. Move the paragraph. Push the whole thing to the next page, accepting a slightly short page before it.

Never change the leading of a single page to fit a line. The difference in line spacing between that page and its neighbour is visible even to readers who could not name what they are seeing.

Preventing them

The settings to look for in whatever tool you use — every serious typesetting engine has these, under one name or another:

Widow control
Minimum lines of a paragraph allowed at the top of a page. Two is standard.
Orphan control
Minimum lines allowed at the bottom. Two is standard.
Keep with next
Applied to headings, so a heading can never be the last thing on a page.
Keep lines together
Applied to short paragraphs and verse, so they are never split at all.

With those set, most widows and orphans never occur — the engine pushes lines forward instead. The residue is the small number of cases where prevention would cost a badly short page, and those are the ones a human resolves.

The final pass

Do this last, after everything else is settled, because any earlier change moves every page break after it. Read the whole book at 100% and mark every stranded line and every runt.

Then fix them from the back forwards. Fixing forwards means each change repaginates everything after it and you re-check pages you have already cleared; working backwards, each fix only affects pages you have not reached yet.

Questions, answered

What is the difference between a widow and an orphan?

A widow is the LAST line of a paragraph, alone at the TOP of a page. An orphan is the FIRST line of a paragraph, alone at the BOTTOM of a page. The mnemonic that actually sticks: an orphan has no past — nothing above it — and a widow has no future.

Does it really matter?

In a printed book, yes. A stranded line breaks the reader's flow at exactly the moment they turn the page, and it is one of the handful of details that separates a book that looks published from one that does not. In an ebook it does not apply at all — the text reflows, so there is no fixed page for a line to be stranded on.

How do I fix a widow or orphan?

Four accepted fixes, in order of preference: reword the paragraph slightly so it runs a line shorter or longer; adjust the tracking of that one paragraph by a very small amount; let one page of a spread run a line short; or move the paragraph entirely. Never change the leading of a single page — that is visible and worse than the problem.

Can software fix them automatically?

Software can prevent most of them, by refusing to break a paragraph in a way that would strand a line — which pushes the line onto the next page instead. What it cannot do is judge the cases where the fix costs more than the fault, so the last pass is still a human reading the book.

Is a single word on the last line of a paragraph a widow?

Strictly no — that is a runt, or in some houses also called a widow, which is where much of the confusion comes from. It is a separate fault and worth fixing for the same reason: a lone word on its own line looks like an accident.

What about a heading at the bottom of a page?

That is the same fault by a different name and is worse, because a heading separated from the text it introduces is actively misleading. Set headings to keep with the following paragraph so they can never be the last thing on a page.

Catch these before the proof arrives

Alhora's typesetting engine applies widow and orphan control as it paginates, and flags the pages it could not resolve rather than silently accepting them.

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