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About Widows and Orphans

You can use widow and orphan control to avoid instances where "leftover" lines from a paragraph are shown at the top or bottom of a page or column. This feature is for print-based output.

Widow control Determines the minimum number of lines in a paragraph to be left at the top of a page or column.
Orphan control Determines the minimum number of lines in a paragraph to be left at the bottom of a page or column.

example

Let's say that you have a paragraph containing seven lines. The first two lines of this paragraph are found at the bottom of page 11, and the final five lines are found at the beginning of page 12. If you want the two lines from page 11 to be pushed to page 12, so that all lines of that paragraph are on the same page, you can set the orphan number at 3. This means that there must be at least three lines at the bottom of the page. But because there are only two, those lines are forced to the next page.

Basic Tasks

Following are the tasks that you may perform when it comes to widow and orphan control:

Enable widow and orphan control By default, widow and orphan control is already enabled when you first install and launch Flare. When this feature is turned on, you can see the effects in the Print Layout mode in the XML Editor (as well as in the output). If you want to turn this feature off or on again, you can do so from the View menu or from the XML Editor. See Enabling and Disabling Widow/Orphan Control.
Set widow and orphan control settings By default, the setting for both widow and orphan control is 2. In other words, Flare will always ensure that at least two lines are shown at the top or bottom of a page. If there is only one line, Flare adjusts the text on the page accordingly. If you want to change the default setting, you can do so. See Setting Widow and Orphan Control.

Icons for page and column breaks

If you are working on a document in the Print Layout mode, you may see icons in the margins next to text. These icons indicate where a paragraph has been moved to another page or column as a result of a page or column break, or due to widow or orphan control. You can set page breaks, column breaks, orphan control, or widow control either manually on individual paragraphs or you can set them on styles. You can click on any of the icons in the document to open the paragraph properties. See Setting Page and Column Breaks.

Following are the types of icons that you might see in a document:

	Explicit page break This icon displays if you have created a page break before a paragraph.
	Explicit page break by previous This icon displays if you have created a page break after a paragraph.
	Explicit column break This icon displays if you have created a column break before a paragraph.
	Explicit page break by previous This icon displays if you have created a column break after a paragraph.
	Orphan controlled This icon displays if a paragraph has been adjusted due to orphan control.
	Widow controlled This icon displays if a paragraph has been adjusted due to widow control.