---
name: Runt
slug: runt
category: typography
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A single word left alone on the last line of a paragraph or heading.
aliases:
  - name: lonely word
  - name: hanging word
tags:
  - editorial
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - widow
    - orphan
    - text-balancing
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso: []
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: An end to typographic widows on the web (Clagnut)
    url: https://clagnut.com/blog/2424
  - title: text-wrap balance vs pretty (LogRocket)
    url: https://blog.logrocket.com/css-text-wrap-balance-vs-text-wrap-pretty/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: naming the lone word on a heading's last line
---

A runt is one word sitting by itself on the last line of a paragraph. Nothing is
broken: the browser filled every line to the measure and this is what was left
over. It still reads as a mistake, because a paragraph is a shape as well as a
block of words, and a shape that ends in a single short stub tells the eye that
something was cut off. Headings, card titles and buttons suffer most, since a
two-line heading with one word on the second line is half stub by area.

The vocabulary here is genuinely contested, so it is worth stating the three
words precisely. A [widow](/widow) is a short last line of a paragraph pushed
onto the top of the next column or page, alone and away from the rest of its
paragraph. An [orphan](/orphan) is the opposite end: the first line of a
paragraph left stranded at the bottom of a column while the rest of it goes
over. A runt is a single word alone on the last line of a paragraph, wherever
that line happens to fall. Plenty of people say "widow" for what this entry
calls a runt, and print tradition on both sides of the Atlantic has swapped the
first two more than once; on the web the column-break sense is the one the CSS
`widows` and `orphans` properties actually implement, which leaves runt as the
free and unambiguous word for the lone stub.

The old fix is a non-breaking space between the last two words, which glues them
together so they wrap as a unit. It works and it is brittle: at a narrow enough
measure the glued pair becomes a two-word runt, and on a heading it can force an
uglier break higher up. The modern answers are
[text balancing](/text-balancing) with `text-wrap: balance` for headings, where
the browser evens the lines out over a small number of them, and
`text-wrap: pretty` for body copy, which leaves the paragraph's shape alone but
specifically works to avoid a short last line. Nudging the measure, or the copy,
still fixes it too.

A runt is not a [rag](/rag) problem, though the two are seen at the same edge. A
rag is the texture of the whole right-hand margin over many lines, and it is
judged as a shape; a runt is a single event at the end of a block, and it is
judged the moment you see it.