(or 800 pages, in the case of the proudhon reader these images are from). Which isn’t so bad on a zine or something, but gets really, really annoying on a 300+ page book. Otherwise, you’ll have to do it all over again. After all the other layout decisions have been made and approved by everyone involved, after the text is finalized (but for a last proof-read, of course). But in my book work, a single-word orphan is only considered a problem if it is shorter than the indent on the next line.Īnyhow, the deal with widow and orphan control is that it comes last. This is considered an error in some publishing, and not others: when I worked with the Earth First Journal, we had all kinds of other text constraints. (note that the figure above also shows a second kind of orphan: a single word on its own at the end of a paragraph. There’s no way to complete automate the process of widow and orphan control. You’ll actually find them a lot in mass-market paperbacks, once you develop an eye for it, but that’s because they’re poorly (or at least hastily) designed. Widows and orphans are considered errors in print design because it interrupts the flow of reading. It’s a single line of a paragraph before a page break (or a column break). This orphan is worse because it’s the only line of text before a large break and a new heading.
This is considered an error.įigure 2: a terrible, wicked, evil orphan. What are widows and orphans? The image at the top shows an “orphan.” (From my work on Property Is Theft, coming out soon from AK Press.) The line “tools of production… through co-operative association?” is isolated from its parent paragraph, which happens to be on the previous page.
Finicky enough on a normal book, but downright fun when you’ve got footnotes as well. Widow and orphan control! One of the more time-consuming elements of book design.
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