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Like any form of editing, making changes in spacing to a body of work can affect spacing later in the piece. For example, some versions of Microsoft Word have an option to automatically prevent widows and orphans under the Paragraph Format tab. If orphans and widows are a reoccurring problem for you, see what options your word processor offers. They can be solved simply by adding a line of space before, to force them onto the next page. Magazine articles use this method with the most success. If all else fails, you can insert an image or pull quote alongside your paragraph to change the spacing. Use this technique with your best judgement an extra line or two of space should be fine, but adding ten lines of space is ridiculous. In longer works, such as books, you might want to add space until the problem paragraph is entirely on the next page. If your text is only a few pages, you can experiment with adjusting page margins.
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In a shorter piece, you can try to adjust the spacing between paragraphs, letters, or lines of text. Sometimes, however, that isn’t an option. The quickest solution is to remove a few unnecessary words, or rewrite a sentence or two. The goal is to reduce the space your paragraph fills by just enough to accommodate the widow line. As a result, this will reflow the remaining text within the paragraph and hopefully add an extra word to the last line, which will eliminate the widow. Look at the paragraph and try adding a line break somewhere by placing the cursor before the last word of a line and press Shift-Return. Luckily, there’s a few techniques to prevent widows and orphans from happening. So how is this achieved Well it’s pretty easy. Orphans are the opposite if there’s only room on a page for one more line, the first line of a paragraph can be “orphaned”, while the rest of the paragraph goes to the next page.īoth issues are visually unappealing to a reader. If left alone, they show up as a single line at the top of the next page.
HOW TO REMOVE WIDOWS AND ORPHANS IN WORD MANUAL
Before you call the police or child protective services, let’s clear up what we’re talking about in typography, widows and orphans refer to lines at the beginning or end of a paragraph that are separated from the body of the paragraph.Īs defined by The Chicago Manual of Style, widows are those pesky lines at the end of paragraphs that get cut off when you run out of space on a page.