WIDOWS AND ORPHANS INDESIGN MANUALS
WIDOWS AND ORPHANS INDESIGN FULL

In Adobe InDesign, for example, you do this in Hyphenation Settings, found in the Paragraph panel menu. In some programs you can eliminate hyphenated widows by telling your program not to hyphenate the last word of a paragraph.

WIDOWS AND ORPHANS INDESIGN FULL

The venerated type and style guide, Words into Type - which does not recognize a thing called an orphan - defines a widow as вЂњa line of less than full measure occurring as the first line of a page.вЂќД«ut whatever you call them, text-processing and page-layout programs donвЂ™t deal well with these things. This is the way I was trained to think about type, and it works for me, and I see the widows and orphans as two distinct problems.

The problem is not its length but its position. Why? I would say, because itвЂ™s an orphan - a piece of paragraph stranded in a bad position. But when that half line appears at the top a column, it is a problem. In the middle of a column, if the last line of a paragraph fills only half the measure, thatвЂ™s no problem typographically. While the first two lines of a paragraph might not constitute an orphan in this layout, a subhead and a single text line, as at the bottom of the second column, certainly does. In the page below, the first column ends with an orphan, and the short remainder of that paragraph forms another orphan at the top of the second column (ending with a widow, for good measure).

A three-line sliver of a paragraph has enough bulk to hold its own at the top or bottom of a column and maintain the rectangular geometry of the whole column. In most layouts, IвЂ™d say two, with the possible exception of newspaper type, where very narrow measures and very shallow paragraph indents mitigate the damage.

When the first line of a paragraph appears as the last line of a column, or the last line of a paragraph - especially a short one (a widow) - appears at the top of a column, the columnвЂ™s corner appears to be dented, especially if the margins are justified.ДЄlthough a one-line orphan is certainly bad, just how many lines of type should by definition constitute an orphan is another arguing point. The problem with orphans is that they mar the geometry of the page, creating the appearance of a bit of text that seems to be flaking off the rest of the column.

WIDOWS AND ORPHANS INDESIGN MANUALS

Many typographic manuals donвЂ™t even recognize the existence of an entity called an orphan, but itвЂ™s a useful term to describe a short portion of a paragraph - either a beginning or an end - thatвЂ™s badly positioned within a column, again at either beginning or end. In this context, though, itвЂ™s marginally acceptable. The short line at the end of the fourth paragraph might be considered a problem if all the other last lines on the page nearly filled the measure. A second widow appears at the end of the third paragraph. The first paragraph has a hyphenated widow bad in itself, it is also so short that it barely covers the 2-em paragraph indent below it. In the following text (set in 11/14 Georgia over 25 picas), a rash of widows appears. A hyphenated widow - in which the last line of a paragraph is a morsel of a hyphenated word - is a particularly egregious subspecies. The wider the line length (also called measure), the more impact a very short widow can have. According to what I learned as a lad, a widow becomes a problem when itвЂ™s so short that it creates the visual impression of a blank line between paragraphs. Most everyone agrees that a widow is a short last line of a paragraph. At the end, you can use whatever terms you like for these conditions, as long as we all agree on solutions to the problems they raise. But for the sake of this discussion - and because IвЂ™m writing it - letвЂ™s use my definitions for the time being. Discussions of typographic widows and orphans normally start with an argument about definitions and what these terms precisely mean.

Widows and orphans indesign