Orphan (typesetting)

In typesetting, an orphan is a word or the last line of a paragraph appearing at the top of a page, with the rest of the paragraph appearing on the preceding page. If the first line of a paragraph appears at the bottom of a page with the remainder appearing on the following page, it is called a widow by type-setters.

Orphans are usually considered to be 'bad' typography and should be suppressed.

Some of the techniques for eliminating an unwanted orphan include:

• forcing a page break early, producing a short page,
• adjusting the leading, (rhymes with "heading") the space between lines, or inter-paragraph spacing,
• adjusting the word spacing to produce 'tighter' or 'looser' paragraphs,
• rewriting the paragraph.

Many typesetters have a hard time remembering the difference between orphans and widows. An easy trick is to remember the saying: Widows have no future (the paragraph seems to disappear after the widow) and orphans have no past (vice versa.)

See also

• Typography
• Widow (typesetting)