Ideally, your Side Heading style should be set up to ensure that Widows and Orphan control is on, and that “Keep with next” is selected. “Widow and Orphan control” is a tricky little feature that behaves differently in different versions of Word. Text for following paragraph has spilt over to the next page Orphan: a line on its own at the end of the page Example of an orphan Widow: a line on its own at the beginning of the next page Widows and Orphans are the terms referring to lines left on their own either at the beginning or end of the page of a multi-page document. So, you could end up with one word on a line by itself at the beginning of a page.Applies to: Word 2010, Word 2013, Word 2016ĭid you ever wonder what Widows and Orphans were in Word? Widows and orphans can be distracting, but widows can be more so because they are at the end of a paragraph, and the last line of a paragraph can be any length, even a single word. Or, maybe you’re following a style guide that mandates no widows and orphans. Whether you enable the widow/orphan control setting or not is a matter of which one bothers you most, widows and orphans or the blank lines. This is normal because lines have to be moved to get rid of the widow or orphan.

Using widow and orphan control can frequently cause extra blank lines to appear at the bottom of a page or column. You could turn on this setting in your paragraph styles in a Word template so you don’t have to worry about applying it manually. Is there some secret to make the widows and orphans function work This thread is locked. When you turn on widow and orphan control for a paragraph, neither widows nor orphans will occur for that paragraph when the document repaginates. I have a two line list paragraph and the widows and orphans check box is checked in the paragraph formatting, but it is still printing one line on one page and the other line on the next. You cannot control only the widow or only the orphan for a paragraph. Widow and orphan control is applied separately for each paragraph.

Change widows and orphans in word 2010