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+<head>
+<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label widows</title>
+</head><body>
+<h3>Controlling widows and orphans</h3>
+<p/>Widows (the last line of a paragraph at the start of a page) and
+orphans (the first line of paragraph at the end of a page) interrupt
+the reader&rsquo;s flow, and are generally considered &ldquo;bad form&rdquo;;
+(La)TeX takes some precautions to avoid them, but completely
+automatic prevention is often impossible. If you are typesetting your
+own text, consider whether you can bring yourself to change the
+wording slightly so that the page break will fall differently.
+<p/>The page maker, when forming a page, takes account of
+<code>\</code><code>widowpenalty</code> and <code>\</code><code>clubpenalty</code> (which relates to orphans!).
+These penalties are usually set to the moderate value of <code>150</code>; this
+offers mild discouragement of bad breaks. You can increase the values
+by saying (for example) <code>\</code><code>widowpenalty</code><code>=500</code>; however, vertical
+lists (such as pages are made of) typically have rather little
+stretchability or shrinkability, so if the page maker has to balance
+the effect of stretching the unstretchable and being penalised, the
+penalty will seldom win. Therefore, for typical layouts, there are
+only two sensible settings for the penalties: finite (150 or 500, it
+doesn&rsquo;t matter which) to allow widows and orphans, and infinite (10000
+or greater) to forbid them.
+<p/>The problem can be avoided by allowing
+the pagemaker to run pages short, by using the <code>\</code><code>raggedbottom</code>
+directive; however, many publishers insist on the default
+<code>\</code><code>flushbottom</code>; it is seldom acceptable to introduce stretchability
+into the vertical list, except at points (such as section headings)
+where the document design explicitly permits it.
+<p/>Once you&rsquo;ve exhausted the automatic measures, and have a final draft
+you want to &ldquo;polish&rdquo;, you should proceed to manual measures. To
+get rid of an orphan is simple: precede the paragraph with
+<code>\</code><code>clearpage</code> and the paragraph can&rsquo;t start in the wrong place.
+<p/>Getting rid of a widow can be more tricky. If the paragraph is a long
+one, it may be possible to set it &lsquo;tight&rsquo;: say <code>\</code><code>looseness</code><code>=-1</code>
+immediately after the last word of the paragraph. If that doesn&rsquo;t
+work, try adjusting the page size:
+<code>\</code><code>enlargethispage{<code>\</code><code>baselineskip</code>}</code> may do the job, and
+get the whole paragraph on one page. Reducing the size of the page by
+<code>\</code><code>enlargethispage{-<code>\</code><code>baselineskip</code>}</code> may produce a
+(more-or-less) acceptable &ldquo;two-line widow&rdquo;. (Note:
+<code>\</code><code>looseness</code><code>=1</code>,
+increasing the line length by one, seldom seems to work &mdash; the looser
+paragraph typically has a one-word final line, which doesn&rsquo;t look much
+better than the straight widow.)
+<p/><p/><p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=widows">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=widows</a>
+</body>