Widows are single last lines stranded at the top of a column.) (Orphans are single first lines stranded at the bottom of a column.

The terms Orphans and Widows are reserved for other typographic problems. Those terms definitely do not describe short last lines at the end of a paragraph. while some people call these widows and other people call them orphans, I agree with David Blatner how proposed the term «runt» and who pointed out that: You called them widows which I think is confusing and not correct in this context. Some call them orphans or widows others call them runts. or a short lines of text with up to 10-signs at the last line of a paragraph.Īn exact term of this typographic crime is vague and (historically) does not exist at all.

In typography, a «runt» occurs when the last line of a paragraph ends with: I suggest using the term « runt» instead of « widowed».ĭavid Blatner introduced the term « runt» for this typographic problem. In this context, the term widow is not a well-chosen terminology.Īctually, it is wrong. Note that these marks will not appear on your document upon printing.You used in your Flow Window the term « Prevent widowed last lines». To use the formatting marks function in your document, click on the HOME tab above the icons on the ribbon menu, and select Show/Hide Paragraph Marks under the Paragraph group of icons. The different formatting marks reveal the presence of tabs (→), regular spaces (.), paragraphs (¶), hidden text, and optional hyphens. To aid you in formatting paragraphs, you can enable the display of certain formatting marks (see Fig. Selecting this option will disable automatic hyphenation. This setting is particularly useful if your document uses the justified paragraph alignment, as when using this particular alignment, Word automatically hyphenates some words when they spill over to the next line. If your document has been set up to display line numbers (i.e., as you would find in a play, poem, philosophical work, or a sacred text), this setting suppresses that function for the selected paragraph. The next two settings specify formatting exceptions: Suppress line numbers. To learn more about inserting breaks, see Section 3: Page and Section Breaks. This setting inserts a standard page break before the current position of the cursor. This setting performs a similar function to Keep with next, except instead of keeping two or more paragraphs on the same page, it keeps two or more lines on the same page. This means that if you highlight a paragraph header, and select this option, the header and the paragraph to which it belongs will always stay together one the same page. It keeps the selected text on the same page as the paragraph that follows it. This setting is useful when utilizing paragraph headers. When selected, this option prevents a paragraph from leaving only one line on the previous page (known as a 'widow' in word processing terminology), as well as prevents only one line from spilling over onto the next page (known as an 'orphan'). Below is a brief overview of what each of these functions do. 7-8 above) control pagination, which is how the text of the paragraph or paragraphs selected are arranged within the document. The settings under Line and Page Breaks accessed from the Paragraph window (see Fig. Beside it, you can also adjust your line spacing. Under Spacing, the Before and After fields specify how much space will go before and after each paragraph. If you only want to adjust the first line and have what is called a hanging indentation, refer to the next section ( Section 8: Tabs).ģ. It is important to remember that the left and right indentation settings affect the entire paragraph, and not simply the first line. Under Indentation, you can set how many inches from the left or right margin you would like to indent your paragraph. If you are writing an outline, you can also change your outline level from this window under the General set of options at the top.Ģ. This will bring up the Paragraph window, where you can specify your own custom indentation.ġ. Another way to manage your indentation is to click on the on the icon under the Paragraph icon group in the ribbon menu (see Fig.

Microsoft word widow orphan setting