But, you get a nice, clean layout with squared-off pages. For the most part, you have to let them do their thing. To achieve squared off pages, you cannot be picky when it comes to widows and orphans. For this, we will use the words as defined above. Regardless of how you learned it, the information below is still the same. So for some, a widow is at the top of a page, and an orphan is at the bottom. Now, other generations learned the opposite meanings. It’s when only one more line will fit at the bottom and that line is the start of a new paragraph.Īn orphan, is a lonely line at the very top of the page where the paragraph ends. Through the years, different generations have learned alternative definitions of the word “widow” and “orphan”.Ī widow, is a lonely line at the very bottom of the page. There’s the “squared-off pages” group and the “no widows or orphans” group. There are two groups out there when it comes to pagination style, so you’ll have to decide which group you fall into.

Widow orphan settings in word