Widows & Orphans
Hi everyone. My name is Leslie Cole and I write help content for Word. This is my first blog entry, and it was prompted by a number of customer questions about the subject of widows and orphans. Let me know if I answered your question; I look forward to hearing from you.
Many Word customers are concerned with the fate of widows and orphans—both the human and document-related ones.
Document-related widows and orphans are the first or last lines of a paragraph that end up all by themselves at the bottom or the top of a page.
Some print document diehards think that widows and orphans are unsightly, and they might even encourage you to remove them from your document.
You'll be relieved to know that the widows and orphans control in Word 2007 and earlier versions is "on" by default. You should never see a widow or an orphan in a Word document unless you unchecked the widow and orphan control for some reason.
You can find the check box by clicking the Home tab and then clicking the dialog box launcher in the lower right corner of the Paragraph group. Click the Line and Page Breaks tab in the Paragraph dialog box to find the control.
Now, save your concerns for the real widows and orphans.
-Leslie
