Special Edition Using Microsoft® Word 2000

Controlling Pagination

For years, typographers and graphic designers have done everything possible to eliminate widows and orphans. This isn't as awful as it sounds. In documents, a widow is the last line of a paragraph that appears by itself at the top of a page. An orphan is the first line of a paragraph left to fend for itself at the bottom of a page. To readers, a widow or orphan can easily be confused with a subhead.

You rarely see a widow or an orphan in a Word document, because Word includes a feature called Widow/Orphan control. If Word encounters a paragraph that will be split at the bottom of the page, separating one line from all the rest, Word automatically makes sure the entire paragraph prints together. For example, it moves the ...