---
name: Widow
slug: widow
category: typography
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A short last line of a paragraph, often a single word, stranded at
  the top of the next column or page.
aliases:
  - name: typographic widow
  - name: widow line
tags:
  - editorial
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - orphan
    - runt
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso: []
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: An end to typographic widows on the web (Clagnut)
    url: https://clagnut.com/blog/2424
  - title: Widow and orphan control (Practical Typography)
    url: https://practicaltypography.com/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: naming a stranded last line at the top of a column
---

The word is from the composing room, where a page was a physical object and a
paragraph could be cut in half by the edge of one. A widow is the tail: the last
line of a paragraph, left at the top of the next column with nothing above it and
nothing after it. The mnemonic that keeps it straight is grim and effective. A
widow has no future, an [orphan](/orphan) has no past, so the widow is the line at
the top and the orphan is the line at the bottom.

Treat the definitions as contested. Bringhurst puts them this way round, and so do
most typesetting manuals, but plenty of style guides and more than one piece of
software swap them, and a few use one word for both. The practical move is to
describe the case rather than name it when it matters: say "a single word on the
last line" or "one line carried to the next column" and nobody has to guess which
tradition you learned.

The web mostly lost the print sense along with the page. With no columns and no
page breaks, there is nothing for a last line to be stranded at the top of, so the
word drifted to the case that does still happen everywhere: a paragraph or heading
whose final line holds one lonely word. That is what a designer means by widow in
a browser nine times out of ten, and it is worth hearing which sense someone is
using before agreeing to fix it.

The fixes go from cheapest to most declarative. Bind the last two words with a
no-break space and they wrap together, which is the oldest trick and still the only
one that works everywhere. `text-wrap: pretty` asks the browser to avoid a short
last line for you, and `text-wrap: balance` evens out a heading of a few lines. In
paged and multi-column contexts the `widows` property states the minimum number of
lines that may be carried over, usually two. Then there is the fix a typesetter
reaches for first, which is to edit the sentence.

What not to do is distort the paragraph to save one word. Tightening the tracking
of a whole block, forcing hyphenation, or nudging the measure until this one
paragraph behaves are all bigger crimes than the widow. And in text you do not
control, user content, translations, anything that reflows, the break moves with
the font, the measure, and the reader's zoom, so ask for the outcome declaratively
and let a stray word through when it happens.