Widows and Orphans - Guidelines

Guidelines

Writing guides, such as the Chicago Manual of Style, generally suggest that a manuscript should have no widows and orphans even when avoiding them results in additional space at the bottom of a page or column. However, in its 16th edition (2011) the Chicago Manual of Style suggests a new convention in which pages may end with the first line of a new paragraph. Some techniques for eliminating widows include:

• Forcing a page break early, producing a shorter page;
• Adjusting the leading, the space between lines of text (although such carding or feathering is usually frowned upon);
• Adjusting the spacing between words to produce 'tighter' or 'looser' paragraphs;
• Adjusting the hyphenation of words within the paragraph;
• Adjusting the page's margins;
• Subtle scaling of the page, though too much non-uniform scaling can visibly distort the letters;
• Rewriting a portion of the paragraph;
• Reduce the tracking of the words;
• Adding a pull quote to the text (more common for magazines); and
• Adding a figure to the text, or resizing an existing figure.

An orphan is cured more easily, by inserting a blank line or forcing a page break to push the orphan line onto the next page to be with the rest of its paragraph. Such a cure may have to be undone if editing the text repositions the automatic page/column break.

Similarly, a single orphaned word at the end of a paragraph can be cured by forcing one or more words from the preceding line into the orphan's line. In web-publishing, this is typically accomplished by concatenating the words in question with a non-breaking space and, if available, by utilizing the orphans: and widows: attributes in Cascading Style Sheets. Sometimes it can also be useful to add non-breaking spaces to the first two (or few) short words of a paragraph to avoid that a single orphaned word is placed to the left or right of a picture or table, while the remainder of the text (with longer words) would only appear after the table.

Most full-featured word processors and page layout applications include a paragraph setting (or option) to automatically prevent widows and orphans. When the option is turned on, an orphan is forced to the top of the next page or column; and the line preceding a widow is forced to the next page or column with the last line.