Widows and Orphans

This article isn't about familial tragedy, nor is it some social message. Rather, it's about the formatting of print books, and the rules you, as a reader, have noticed subconsciously if not consciously. Different sources define widows and orphans differently. Some say an orphan is the first line of a multiline paragraph stranded at the bottom of a page, while a widow is the last line of a multiline paragraph stranded at the top of a page. For clarity, I'm referring to the two terms as a collective. A widow or orphan occurs when a single line of a multiline paragraph appears at the bottom or top of a page.

You likely haven't seen this too often in novels, at least not from mainstream publishers. Publishers utilize software to set up rules so this can't happen. In particular, rules assure that things must happen in twos: there must be at least two lines of a multiline paragraph at the bottom of a page and at the top of a page.

This is the first line of a paragraph
This is the second line of a paragraph

With proper rules, this paragraph cannot be split between pages. Splitting it would leave a widow orphan on both pages. As a result, the entire paragraph moves to the next page, leaving two blank lines at the bottom of the current page.

This is the first line of a paragraph
This is the second line of a paragraph
This is the third line of a paragraph

Because of the rule of two, this three-line paragraph can't be split between pages. As with the previous example, the entire paragraph would move to the next page, leaving three blank lines at the bottom of the current page.

If you've done any work in Microsoft Word, you might have noticed that Word has unbalanced pages, meaning one page can have more lines of text (or fewer) than another page. This is because Word has its own default rules for handling widows and orphans. For personal documents—perhaps even for office documents—this is perfectly fine.

But for published books, unbalanced pages are not acceptable, in particular when they happen to be facing pages. Publishers go a step further by balancing those pages. Before I explain how, let me describe a worst-case scenario.

The scene divider in my books takes up three lines: a blank line, a graphic, and another blank line. I have rules set up so that the scene divider, if it hits near the bottom of the page, must be followed by at least two lines of text. If there's only one line of text after a scene divider, guess what happens? Yes, the entire scene divider and that one line of text shift to the next page, creating the worst-case scenario: four blank lines at the bottom of a page.

How to fix unbalanced pages? Fortunately, Adobe InDesign, a software used by myself and many publishers to format printed books, offers granular control. In essence, we must increase or decreasing the number of lines before the empty area at the bottom of a page. Increasing the number of lines reduces the size of the empty area. On the other hand, reducing the number of lines can pull an element from the next page into the current page, effectively eliminating the empty space. This is done by adjusting the space between letters. If, for example, a paragraph ends with a single word on its own line—in particular if the word is short—we can reduce the space between letters in order to pull this word to the previous line. On the other hand, if the last line of a paragraph stretches across the page, we can increase the space between letters such that the end of the paragraph is pushed down a line. Note that this adjustment between letters, which is called tracking, is so tiny that the reader won't notice.

(If you have noticed increased spacing between words in certain books, the culprit is likely justification, not tracking. Justification tends to make more severe adjustments, in particular where hyphenation is minimized, but that’s a whole other topic.)

But what happens if we don't have these opportunities? What if a page has two blank lines at the bottom, but no paragraphs above it end on short or long lines? Then, one must edit the prose in order to balance the page. That can mean breaking a long paragraph into multiple paragraphs. That can mean shortening or lengthening multiple sentences. Heck, I found myself removing entire sentences that are not vital to the book.

That's right, readers: when it comes to print formatting, aesthetics rule. But editing for the sake of page balancing tends to be the exception, not the rule. Often times, I was able to make adjustments on previous page that put in a better spot on the present page. It’s a bit like solving a puzzle.

There's another rule I haven't mentioned that's invaluable to formatters, and occurred several times as I was formatting my novel, Tenebrous. On two facing pages, it is acceptable if both pages are missing a single line at the bottom—and only a single line.. I was often able to take advantage of this rule to balance facing pages.

Note that these rules apply to print only. E-books use reflowable text, meaning the reader controls the font size and the device determines where pages break. There are no fixed pages, no facing pages, and therefore no pages to balance. The formatter has very little control over how an e-book renders on any given device, unless you’re talking about fixed-layout e-books used for comic books, children’s book, etc., but that is a whole other matter.

So there you have it. Print formatting is an art, not a science, and sometimes aesthetics must take priority.