Widow (typesetting)

In typesetting, a widow appears if the first line of a paragraph is appearing at the bottom of a page with the remainder appearing on the following page. If a word or the last line of a paragraph appears at the top of a page, with the rest of the paragraph appearing on the preceding page, it is referred to as an orphan.

Related Topics:
Typesetting - ''orphan''

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Widows, in this sense, are usually considered unattractive typographically and should be suppressed.

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Some of the techniques for eliminating an unwanted widow include:

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• forcing a page break early, producing a short page,
• adjusting the leading, (rhymes with "heading") the space between lines, or inter-paragraph spacing,
• adjusting the word spacing to produce 'tighter' or 'looser' paragraphs,
• rewriting the paragraph.

Many typesetters have a hard time remembering the difference between orphans and widows. An easy trick is to remember the saying: Widows have no future (the paragraph seems to disappear after the widow) and orphans have no past (vice versa.)

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Widow (typesetting): See also ►