WORD

Widows and Orphans

Widows and orphans occur when only one line of a paragraph appears on a page.  To make your document more readable you should not allow paragraphs split across two pages if they contain less than 4 lines and you should ensure that if a paragraph does split across two pages it has at least 2 lines of that paragraph on each page.  You can make Word control the layout of your paragraphs for you by ensuring that Widow/Orphan control is set in your document.  To do this, click on the Format drop-down menu and choose Paragraph.  Click on the Line and Page Breaks tab of the window that appears and make sure there is a tick in the Widow/Orphan control box.

If you have set widow/orphan control then it will not be possible to type a 3 line paragraph so that it splits across 2 pages, Word will automatically move the whole paragraph onto the next page.  If this causes you a problem you can highlight the paragraph you do not want to be controlled and turn off the widow/orphan control by removing the tick from the box in the window above.

To prevent longer paragraphs or lists from splitting across 2 pages you should use the 'Keep lines together' facility.