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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’s flow, and are generally considered “bad form”;
(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’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’ve exhausted the automatic measures, and have a final draft
you want to “polish”, 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’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 ‘tight’: say <code>\</code><code>looseness</code><code>=-1</code>
immediately after the last word of the paragraph. If that doesn’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 “two-line widow”. (Note:
<code>\</code><code>looseness</code><code>=1</code>,
increasing the line length by one, seldom seems to work — the looser
paragraph typically has a one-word final line, which doesn’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>
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