Design Nomenclature / Type

Widow

This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.

A paragraph's last line stranded at the top of the next column or page, cut off from the text it belongs to. Some traditions also call a short final line — a single word alone at the end of a paragraph — a widow, wherever it sits. Both usages are current and neither is wrong; say which you mean.

Two column pairs. In the first, the second column opens with the paragraph's last line — tinted and marked with a caret — stranded above the next paragraph, with the three lines it belongs to left behind in the first column. In the second, the break has been moved back a line so the paragraph's final two lines carry over together and nothing is stranded.

In practice

"An orphan has no past, a widow has no future." CSS defines both as minimum line counts and swaps nothing, but the terms are genuinely reversed in some older shops — check before arguing.

Not to be confused with

How this term connects

Baseline gridMeasureOrphanRagWidow
Related Confused with