Troubleshooting
Widows and orphans
How you'd notice this
A single short line of a paragraph sits alone at the very top of a page (a "widow") or alone at the very bottom of a page (an "orphan"), looking disconnected from the rest of its paragraph and visually awkward.
Why it happens
These happen naturally as an ordinary side effect of pagination, a paragraph simply breaks across a page boundary at an unlucky point. Most word processors have a widow/orphan control setting that's on by default and usually prevents the worst cases automatically, but it can get toggled off, overridden by a paragraph-level setting, or simply not catch every case, especially near a chapter break.
How to fix it
You haven't picked a formatting program yet, so every program's steps are shown below, pick a tab for the one you're using.
- Check Home > Paragraph dialog > Line and Page Breaks tab and confirm "Widow/Orphan control" is checked, this is on by default but can get unchecked, especially by pasted-in text carrying its own paragraph settings.
- For a specific stubborn instance, a small manual tweak (adjusting tracking slightly, or a very minor word-choice edit to shift line breaks) is standard practice, this is one of the few spots hand-tuning is normal even in fully-styled manuscripts.
- Google Docs doesn't expose an explicit widow/orphan control toggle the way Word does, its default pagination behavior is generally reasonable, but you'll need to manually check page breaks near chapter ends and adjust wording slightly if a bad break appears.
- Atticus's typesetting engine handles widow/orphan avoidance automatically as part of its layout, there's no manual toggle needed. If you still see one in the live preview, a very minor text edit to shift the line break is the standard fix.
- Open your Paragraph Style's Keep Options panel (or Paragraph panel menu > Keep Options) and set "Start" to avoid widows/orphans by keeping lines together, or use InDesign's built-in Balance Ragged Lines / manual line-break adjustments for one-off cases.
- For a specific instance, InDesign's tracking/kerning nudge on the paragraph, or a small edit to the text, is normal practice, treat isolated widows/orphans as a manual polish pass right before final export.
- Scrivener's own pagination isn't the final print layout, so don't chase this in Scrivener, check for widows/orphans in whichever program (Word/Atticus) produces your actual print-ready file, using that program's control.
- Pages doesn't expose an explicit widow/orphan control toggle, its default pagination is generally reasonable, but you'll need to manually check page breaks near chapter ends and adjust wording slightly if a bad break appears.
- Reedsy Studio's typesetting engine handles widow/orphan avoidance automatically as part of its layout, there's no manual toggle needed. If you still see one in the preview, a very minor text edit to shift the line break is the standard fix.
- Vellum's typesetting handles widow/orphan avoidance automatically as part of its layout, there's no manual toggle needed. If you still see one in the preview, a very minor text edit to shift the line break is the standard fix.
- Check Format > Paragraph > Text Flow tab and confirm "Orphan control" and "Widow control" are both checked with a line-count minimum (commonly 2), this is not always on by default and can get reset by pasted-in text carrying its own paragraph settings.
- For a specific stubborn instance, a small manual tweak (a very minor word-choice edit to shift line breaks) is standard practice, this is one of the few spots hand-tuning is normal even in fully-styled manuscripts.