Re: OT: Orphans and Widows (which is which)

[Bill Briggs <web@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:55 AM -0500 12/17/05, Rick Quatro wrote:
>Hello Framers,
>
>I always confuse widows and orphans and don't have a ready-reference to set me straight.
>
>One is a single word on the last line; the other is the last line of a paragraph by itself at the top of a column. Which is which? Thanks in advance.

 I learned it with respect to lines, not single words. Here's the salient quote from Robert Bringhurst's "Elements of Typographic Style".

"Typographic terminology is telling. Isolated lines create when paragraphs begin on the last line of a page are known as orphans. They have no past, but they do have a guture, and they need not trouble the typographer. The stub-ends left when paragraphs end on the first line of a page are called widows. They have a past but not a future, and they look foreshortened and forlorn. It is the custom - in most, if not all, the world's typographic cultures - to give them one additional line for company."

- web

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