Widow (typesetting)

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

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

Some of the techniques for eliminating an unwanted widow include:

turning lines in the paragraph so that an extra line is transferred to the following page,
adjusting the leading (rhymes with "heading"), the space between lines, or inter-paragraph spacing,
adjusting the tracking, or sometimes the word spacing to produce 'tighter' or 'looser' paragraphs,
subtly adjusting the page's margins,
subtle digital scaling of the page - either horizontally or vertically, or both - though too much non-uniform scaling can visibly distort the letters,
rewriting the paragraph.

Many typesetters have a trouble remembering the difference between orphans and widows, and it seems that the traditional distinction has become somewhat blurred over the years. However, traditionally, "orphan" refers to a line at the bottom of a page, "widow" to a line at the top of a page. For example, Collins English Dictionary defines "widow" in printing as "A short line at the end of a paragraph, especially one that occurs as the top line of a page or column".

The easiest way to remember this is that "an orphan's future is uncertain" - in other words, you can't see what's going to happen in the rest of the paragraph. Also, an orphan is a paragraph left alone at the beginning of its life, while a widow is left alone at its end.

References

^* - TeX FAQ - Controlling widows and orphans, accessed March 16, 2006.
^* ("Widow and Orphan: A widow is the last line of a paragraph printed by itself at the top of a page. An orphan is the first line of a paragraph printed by itself at the bottom of a page.") - Microsoft TechNet, accessed March 16, 2006
Collins English Dictionary 6th edition. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers, 2003. ISBN 0007109822

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