Which term refers to the first or last line appearing alone at the top or bottom of the page?

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widow and orphan controlYour call

Pic­ture a para­graph that starts at the bot­tom of one page and con­tin­ues at the top of the next. When only the last line of the para­graph ap­pears at the top of the sec­ond page, that line is called a widow. When only the first line of the para­graph ap­pears at the bot­tom of the first page, that line is called an or­phan.

Widow and or­phan con­trol pre­vents both. Or­phans are moved to the next page with the rest of the para­graph. To cure wid­ows, lines are moved from the bot­tom of one page to the top of the next. It’s a lit­tle more com­pli­cated than it sounds, be­cause cur­ing a widow can­not cre­ate a new or­phan, nor vice versa.

Be aware that if you use widow and or­phan con­trol, you will fre­quently see blank lines at the bot­tom of your pages. This is nor­mal, since lines must be trans­planted to cure the problem.

Widow and or­phan con­trol in a word proces­sor is all-or-noth­ing. You can’t con­trol wid­ows and or­phans sep­a­rately, even though wid­ows are more dis­tract­ing. Why? Or­phans ap­pear at the be­gin­ning of a para­graph, so they’re at least a full line. But wid­ows can be any length, even a sin­gle word, be­cause they ap­pear at the end of a paragraph.

Do you need widow and or­phan con­trol? Try it. See how it looks. In my own work, I ap­proach widow and or­phan con­trol the same way I ap­proach lig­a­tures—I only use it if wid­ows and or­phans are caus­ing a vis­i­ble prob­lem. Oth­er­wise, I find that the blank lines at the bot­tom of the page are more an­noy­ing than the wid­ows and orphans.

How to turn on widow & orphan control

WordRight-click in the text and se­lect Paragraph → Line and Page Breaks → check Widow / Orphan control

PagesView → Show Toolbar (or op­tion + ⌘ + t) → Format but­ton → More pane → check Prevent widow & orphan lines

CSSNot applicable

by the way

• You can also cure iso­lated wid­ows and or­phans with some ju­di­cious edit­ing. But don’t use a hard line break or car­riage re­turn.

• Wid­ows & or­phans aren’t typ­i­cally an is­sue on the web, be­cause web con­tent doesn’t nat­u­rally span mul­ti­ple pages. Browsers, how­ever, are happy to put a small word alone on the last line of a para­graph, which al­ways looks bad. You can fix this with a non­break­ing space and a lit­tle clever programming.

• Here in the 21st cen­tury, the widow and or­phan ter­mi­nol­ogy lands on the ques­tion­able side of quaint. I fa­vor coin­ing a new term for this ty­po­graphic con­di­tion. One word should suf­fice—it’s the same prob­lem, just at dif­fer­ent edges of the page. Maybe strag­glers and thus strag­gler con­trol? Nom­i­na­tions welcome.

A widowed line: the last line of a paragraph, all alone on the other side of a page break.
At the end of the first paragraph, the word "lorem" is an orphan in the second sense: a very short final line that, because the rest of its line is white, creates an impression of two lines of whitespace between the paragraphs.

In typesetting, widows and orphans are lines at the beginning or end of a paragraph that are left dangling at the top or bottom of a page or column, separated from the rest of the paragraph. (The typographer's terms for the top and bottom of a page or column are head and foot.)

Definitions[edit]

There is some disagreement about the definitions of widows and orphans; what one source calls a widow another calls an orphan.[1][full citation needed][2][3] The Chicago Manual of Style provides these definitions:[3][dead link]

WidowA paragraph-ending line that falls at the beginning of the following page or column, thus separated from the rest of the text. Mnemonically, a widow is "alone at the top" (of the family tree but, in this case, of the page).OrphanA paragraph-opening line that appears by itself at the bottom of a page or column, thus separated from the rest of the text. Mnemonically, an orphan is "alone at the bottom" (of the family tree but, in this case, of the page).Alternately, a word, part of a word, or very short line that appears by itself at the end of a paragraph. Mnemonically still "alone at the bottom", just this time at the bottom of a paragraph. Orphans of this type give the impression of too much white space between paragraphs.

Guidelines[edit]

About the appearance of a page of text, The Chicago Manual of Style indicates that a manuscript should have no orphans or widows, even if their elimination leaves additional blank space at the bottom of the column or the page.[4] In the 16th edition, The Chicago Manual of Style (2011) suggests a new convention to determine which pages may end with the first line of a new paragraph.[5]

The techniques for eliminating widows include:

• Forcing a page break early, producing a shorter page;
• Adjusting the leading, the space between lines of text;
• Adjusting the spacing between words to produce tighter or looser paragraphs;
• Adjusting the hyphenation within the paragraph;
• Adjusting the margins of the page;
• Subtle scaling of the page without distorting the letters;
• Rewriting a portion of the paragraph;
• Reduce the letter-spacing (tracking) of the words;
• Adding a pull quote to the text (usual in magazines); and
• Adding a floating block (figure) to the text, or resizing an existing figure.

An orphan is more easily deleted, either by inserting a blank line or by forcing a page break to push the orphan line onto the next page, to be part of the paragraph to which the orphan belongs. Similarly, an orphan word at the end of a paragraph can be relocated by forcing one or more words from the preceding text line into the paragraph line of the orphan. 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 having a single orphaned word 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-feature word processors and page layout applications include an automatic paragraph setting that prevents widows and orphans; thus, an orphan is forced to the top of the next page or column; and the text line preceding a widow is forced to the next page or column. In technical writing, where a single source may be published in different formats, with the viewer's expectation of viewing content in different sizes and resolutions, the paragraph settings automatically prevent widows and orphans. Manual overrides, such as inserted empty lines or extra spaces, can cause the insertion of a white space into the middle of pages.

References[edit]

1. ^ Carter, Rob. A widowed line, highlighted in yellow.
2. ^ Day, Ben. Meggs, Philip. Typographic Design: Form and Communication. 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons: 1993. p. 263.
3. ^ a b The Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed., University of Chicago Press. Archived 2016-05-31 at the Wayback Machine.
4. ^ The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., 2003, University of Chicago Press. 3.11 Overall appearance: "A page should not begin with the last line of a paragraph unless it is full measure and should not end with the first line of a new paragraph."
5. ^ The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th ed., 2011, University of Chicago Press. 2.113: "A page should not begin with the last line of a paragraph unless it is full measure. (A page can, however, end with the first line of a new paragraph.)"

What is the term for the first line of a paragraph that is left alone at the bottom of a page called?

What is the term for the last line of a paragraph when it is left alone at the top of the page?

Which of the following is the term for the last line of a paragraph when it is left alone at the top of a page a orphan B widow c widow orphan control d keep lines together?

What is the term for text that appears at the bottom of every page?