Widows and Orphans in Typesetting (and How to Fix Them)

You open your printed proof, turn the page, and there it is. One lonely line at the top of the page: the tail end of a paragraph that started overleaf. That stray line is called a widow, and its cousin at the bottom of the page is an orphan. Neither will stop your book being printed, but both make a page look unfinished. Here's what they are, how to spot them on a page, and how to fix them in Word and InDesign.

Key takeaways#

A widow is the last line of a paragraph left alone at the top of a page. An orphan is the first line of a paragraph left alone at the bottom of a page.
A single short word on the last line of a paragraph is a runt, not a widow or an orphan, though many people use the words loosely.
In Word, Widow/Orphan control is on by default. You'll find it under Paragraph settings, on the Line and Page Breaks tab.
In InDesign, set Keep Options to keep at least two lines together at the start and end of each paragraph, then fix what's left by hand.
KDP's checks are about whether your file can be printed, not how it reads, so a widow will sail through. You have to catch it yourself.

What are widows and orphans in typesetting?#

The terms come from the page layout trade, and they describe how a paragraph breaks across two pages or columns:

A widow is the last line of a paragraph that lands on its own at the top of the next page. It has a past (the rest of the paragraph) but no future.
An orphan is the first line of a paragraph that sits on its own at the foot of a page, with everything else from that paragraph carried over to the next one. It has no past.

That's how Adobe, the Chicago Manual of Style and Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style use the words. You'll find websites that swap them round, and that's partly why searching for "widows and orphans" brings up such a muddle. If you can't remember which is which, don't worry. The fix is the same: don't leave a single line of a paragraph stranded at the top or bottom of a page.

What about a single word at the end of a paragraph?

That's a different problem. A short word, or half a hyphenated word, sitting alone on the last line of a paragraph is usually called a runt. Lots of people call it a widow too. A runt can happen anywhere on the page. It wastes a line, and if it happens to fall at the top of a page, you've got a runt and a widow at the same time, which is the worst of both.

Widow, orphan or runt?

	RecommendedWidow	Orphan	Runt
What it is	The last line of a paragraph, alone at the top of a page or column	The first line of a paragraph, alone at the bottom of a page or column	One short word, or part of a word, on the last line of a paragraph
Where you see it	Top of a page	Bottom of a page	Anywhere on the page
Memory trick	A widow has a past but no future	An orphan has no past	Small, lonely and at the end of the litter
How bad is it?	The one typesetters fix first, especially if the line is short	Less jarring than a widow; some style guides now tolerate it	Mostly cosmetic, but it wastes a line and can create a widow
Word's automatic fix	Widow/Orphan control	Widow/Orphan control	None; edit the text or tighten the spacing
InDesign's automatic fix	Keep Options, End lines set to 2	Keep Options, Start lines set to 2	None built in; use tracking, No Break or a light edit

Scroll to see all columns

Why do they matter if the book still prints?#

Because readers feel them, even if they couldn't name them. A widow breaks the shape of the page. The reader turns over, sees a fragment, and has to glance back to the previous page to remember what the sentence was about. A short widow at the top of a left-hand page also leaves that page looking lighter than the page facing it.

Orphans are less jarring. Bringhurst says orphans "need not trouble the typographer", and recent editions of the Chicago Manual of Style allow a page to end with the first line of a new paragraph. Widows, especially short ones, are the ones that look careless. Most professional typesetters fix both anyway, because it's part of what makes a self-published book look like it came from a publisher.

A before-and-after page

Picture a right-hand page in a novel. Before: the page opens with four words, "and then she left.", followed by a new paragraph. The page looks as if it has started halfway through a thought, and the two lines of the paragraph before it are stuck at the bottom of the previous page.

After: the typesetter tightens the spacing in a paragraph on the previous page by a hair. One line disappears, the four stray words pull back to join their paragraph, and the right-hand page now starts with a full new paragraph. Nothing in the text changed. The reader never notices, and that's the point.

How to fix widows and orphans in Word#

If you're formatting your own book in Word, you're starting with one advantage: the main setting is already switched on. Microsoft's own help pages say Widow/Orphan control is on by default. Here's where it lives, and how to check it:

1Select your body text. Better still, right-click your body text style in the Styles gallery and choose Modify, so the change applies to every paragraph.
2Open the Paragraph settings. On the Home tab, click the small launcher arrow in the corner of the Paragraph group (in a style, choose Format, then Paragraph).
3Go to the Line and Page Breaks tab.
4Under Pagination, tick Widow/Orphan control.
5While you're there, make sure your heading styles have Keep with next ticked, so a heading never sits alone at the bottom of a page. Word's built-in heading styles already do.

Widow/Orphan control makes Word keep at least two lines of a paragraph together at the top or bottom of a page. It works, but it has a side effect. Word fixes the problem by pushing an extra line onto the next page, which leaves the previous page one line short. In a printed book, facing pages should end on the same line, so an uneven bottom margin can be nearly as noticeable as the widow was.

For a cleaner result, fix the stubborn ones by hand:

Edit the text. If it's your book, cutting or adding a few words in the paragraph is often the quickest fix of all.
Tighten the spacing slightly. Select the paragraph, open the Font dialog box, go to the Advanced tab and set Spacing to Condensed by a very small amount. Keep it subtle, or the paragraph will look cramped.
Never use a manual line break or extra Enter to push text down. It looks fine until something changes earlier in the book, then it creates a gap somewhere else.

Our step-by-step guide to how to format a book in Word covers styles, section breaks and the rest of the setup.

How to fix widows and orphans in InDesign#

InDesign doesn't stop widows and orphans by default, but it gives you much finer control once you set it up. Start with the automatic setting:

1Edit your body text paragraph style (so the change applies across the book).
2Go to Keep Options. You can also reach it from the Paragraph panel menu.
3Tick Keep Lines Together and choose At Start/End of Paragraph.
4Set Start to 2 lines (no orphans) and End to 2 lines (no widows).
5For headings, set Keep with Next to at least 2 lines, so each heading always has text under it.

To see any paragraph that breaks your rules, turn on Keep Violations under Preferences, then Composition. InDesign will highlight it for you.

Keep Options has the same weakness as Word: it fixes a widow by moving a line, which can leave a page short. That's why professional typesetters finish the job by hand, page by page:

Adjust tracking. Tighten or loosen the tracking on a nearby paragraph by a small amount to pull a line back or push one forward. The change is too small for a reader to see.
Run a spread long or short. Let both facing pages run one line longer or shorter than normal, so they still line up with each other.
Use No Break on the last two words of a paragraph to stop a runt.
Check the hyphenation settings for that paragraph, since one extra or one fewer hyphen can be enough.

For how this fits into the rest of the job, see our guide to what typesetting is.

Fix widows last, after the words are final

Every edit reflows the pages that follow it. If you fix widows and orphans and then change a sentence in chapter three, you can undo your work for the rest of the book. Do the final proofread first, lock the text, then make one careful pass through the pages from front to back.

Why KDP won't flag widows and orphans#

Many authors assume that if their file passes KDP, it's fine. That's not quite true. KDP's Print Previewer looks for problems that affect printing: margins, trim size, bleed, cover size and fonts that aren't embedded. We cover the common ones in our guide to KDP manuscript upload errors.

A widow doesn't stop a book printing, so it isn't on that list. KDP will accept a file full of widows and orphans, and IngramSpark's file checks are about print specifications too. Nobody checks the typography for you. The only way to catch them is to look.

So order a printed proof, or at least go through the PDF at two pages side by side, the way the book will be read. Look at the top and bottom of every page. It's slow, and it's worth it.

This applies to print. Kindle and other reflowable ebooks change the page layout when the reader changes the font or text size, so you can't control where pages break, and you don't need to try.

When to hand it to a typesetter#

If your book is short and mostly plain text, Word's settings plus a careful look at your proof will get you a long way. If it's a full-length novel, has lots of headings, or you'd rather not spend a weekend nudging spacing, this is exactly what a typesetter does. Professional interior book design includes a page-by-page check for widows, orphans, runts and awkward breaks as standard.

At HMD Publishing, our book formatting is typeset by hand in Adobe InDesign with page-by-page quality control, and it starts at £197 ($249) for books up to 20,000 words. You get a print-ready PDF and a reflowable EPUB prepared for KDP and IngramSpark. Before you commit, we'll format your first chapter free, so you can see how your pages look. See our book formatting service for the details.

A widow is the last line of a paragraph sitting alone at the top of a new page or column. An orphan is the first line of a paragraph sitting alone at the bottom of a page or column. A common way to remember it: an orphan has no past, and a widow has no future.

Strictly, no. A short word stranded on the last line of a paragraph is usually called a runt. Some people and some software call it a widow or an orphan, which is why the terms get muddled. It only becomes a widow if that short last line also lands at the top of a page.

Select your text, open the Paragraph dialog box from the small launcher arrow in the Paragraph group on the Home tab, go to the Line and Page Breaks tab, and tick Widow/Orphan control under Pagination. It is on by default, so if you still see widows, check whether it has been switched off in your body text style.

Open Keep Options from the Paragraph panel menu, tick Keep Lines Together, choose At Start/End of Paragraph and set Start and End to 2 lines. Do this in your body text paragraph style so it applies everywhere. For the cases that remain, tighten or loosen the tracking of a nearby paragraph slightly, or run a whole spread one line long or short.

No. KDP's checks look for problems that affect printing, such as margins, trim size, bleed and embedded fonts. Widows and orphans don't stop a book printing, so KDP won't flag them. Readers will notice them, though, so check your proof copy.

Much less. Kindle and other reflowable ebooks change the page layout whenever the reader changes the font or text size, so you cannot control where pages break. Widows and orphans are mainly a print problem, for paperbacks and hardcovers.

One lonely line at the top of the page?

Our typesetters lay out your book by hand in Adobe InDesign and check every page for widows, orphans and awkward breaks. Send your manuscript and we'll format your first chapter free, so you can see the difference before you pay.

From USD 249Get your free formatted first chapter