Formatting - Remember the widows and orphans!

[G J (Gaff to my friends)]

Hi all,

I was hoping someone could help with regards to paperback layout in general. I'm struggling to decide on widows and orphans and what I should allow/what is acceptable in print format these days.

A number of articles strictly forbid the use of widows and orphans for the sake of keeping flow and aesthetics in the text. Other articles, on the other hand, give rules for allowing some widows and orphans depending on the circumstances for the sake of keeping a consistent pagination (or a nice square look to the page, if you're as unfamiliar with the terminology as I was this morning).

What are people's thoughts on widows and orphans (those lines at the top and bottom of the page that belong to paragraphs on the page before them), and does anyone have any definitive rules that they could refer me to?

[Patti (baconater)]

You'd probably get more replies you said you've got a formatting question in your thread title, Gaff.

I expected you to shake a tin can at me when I opened the thread. ;)

[G J (Gaff to my friends)]

Patti (baconater) wrote: "You'd probably get more replies you said you've got a formatting question in your thread title, Gaff.

I expected you to shake a tin can at me when I opened the thread. ;)"

Oops, I meant to put 'formatting' at the beginning of the thread title originally, but the lesson ended and I must have hit post. Corrected now though. Thanks, Patti.

[David]

I will generally increase or decrease line spacing in a chapter by a small amount to avoid the end page having only a few sentences, but I don't worry about it too much at paragraph level, other than if the odd word or two throws over to another page.

I found it better to do this manually, than rely on the settings in word. Can remember exactly, but the settings did weird things to the general appearance that I didn't like.

[Darren]

As a reader, if the story is holding my attention enough then you could just one word on a page and it wouldn't bother me. Considering some of the things that the likes of Michael Moorcock did with how their books were formatted, I doubt that this is a major issue.

[Will]

I don't like to argue with the missus. She does all my editing and typesetting and she doesn't like widows or orphans. She makes me rewrite to make them go away.

I suppose it's a matter of style. Technically speaking we are supposed to avoid widows and orphans. But if a reader has got far enough into a book to spot one, it's probably not going to give them a book-wall moment.

Personally, I'd err on the side of caution and try to avoid any widows or orphans. And most certainly orphans at the end of a chapter.

The nearest I can find for definitive rules is this, which refers to the Chicago Manual of Style:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_...

[Keith]

Good question.

I was formatting a novel with 'widow and orphan control' switched on, and noticed that some pages appear shorter than others - the simple reason being that page breaks were 'pushing' new paragraphs on to the next page and leaving a bigger margin at the bottom. It didn't look right - and it seemed more important to me that the pages look even, than paragraphs having no end lines relegated to the next page.

Having read this thread, I thought I'd checked some random paperbacks, and in the first one, I could find no widows or orphans. Despite this, all pages appear to be the same length. So I wonder how that was achieved.

The second book had both widows and orphans, and I really don't think I would have noticed, if I had been reading it.

I think this issue is more important in a compact report document where layout is possibly more critical (e.g. for promotions), but in a novel it's more a matter of flow. And remember, on a Kindle, for example, you can't even determine where the page breaks are going to occur.

I certainly wouldn't dream of editing the text to avoid widows or orphans - that sounds like a real triumph of style over substance!

[Michael]

This is quite literally the first I've heard of this!

The only time I would ever really notice this would be at the end of a chapter, where a new page only has one or two lines... but it certainly wouldn't bother me.

[David]

In a printed book, Keith, because the type is at a determined size that does not alter from device to device as with an ebook, things like widows and orphans are avoided via subtle altering of kerning (the space between letters) and line spacing.

[Patsy]

If it's just a few words on the last page in a chapter it can look a little silly, and as big publishers never do that, it might seem amateurish. I think it's worth editing or formatting to avoid that, but I don't worry about having different amounts of white space at the end of each chapter.

Personally I think three or more lines looks OK. (Page size might play a part too though - the bigger it is, the more lost a few words will look.)

Having said that, I agree with Darren that if the book is otherwise good, orphan lines wouldn't bother me.