I rediscovered two writing terms this evening: “widows” and “orphans.” A “widow” is that last line of a paragraph that strays to the next page. An “orphan” is the opposite: the first line of a paragaph left stranded at the bottom of a page, while the rest is on the next page. Both usually require adjustments to one’s margin settings in one’s word processing application.
I rediscovered these terms while reading Nancy Carroll Gravley’s review of Mariner Write, which has a function to automatically fix these problems without the user having to futz with margin settings.
Posted by retrophisch at December 21, 2004 11:18 PM | TrackBack