Orphan (typesetting)

In typesetting, an orphan is a word or the last line of a paragraph appearing at the top of a page, with the rest of the paragraph appearing on the preceding page. If the first line of a paragraph appears at the bottom of a page with the remainder appearing on the following page, it is called a widow by type-setters.

Orphans are usually considered to be 'bad' typography and should be suppressed.

Some of the techniques for eliminating an unwanted orphan include: