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Is there widow/orphan control in indesign?

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
March 26, 2010
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Hi, is there an orphan/widow (???) function in indesign? I am creating a document, with three to four paragraphs per page, and a blank line between paragraphs, but I don't want any blank lines at the bottom or top of any pages. Is this something one has to sort out manually, page by page? Just curious

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Correct answer Jongware

Only when humanly possible, I fill pages all the way to the end. Rather than changing the leading or blank line heights (which is extremely visible if you have two plain text pages next to eachother), I scan for long paragraphs with either short or very long last lines. Minimally adjusting the tracking (never more than -2 or +10! never in two consecutive paragraphs!) may just "win" or "loose" a line, effectively hiding that extra space at the bottom.

How do I remember what I changed? I don't -- if I get revisions, and a page ends badly, I scan the previous pages for "fixes". Removing them usually wins back the line I lost earlier.

I don't ever attempt to fill more than two lines. Sometimes there is white space at the bottom of a page.

Peter Spier

Community Expert

If by blank lines you mean you hit enter to make an empty paragraph, then hit it again to type the next paragraph, that's a really bad habit you should break. The proper way to have blank space between paragraphs is to add "Space Before" or "Space After" amounts. These can be added locally, or as part of a paragraph style.

The biggest advantage of using space befor/after is that it is ignored if it falls at the top of a column so you don't need to jump through these hoops. It will be honored at the bottom of a column, so you have the potential for a blank area at the bottom of the page, but you won't fix that using widow/orphan control. The only way to avoid it is to be sure you have enough lines to fill or over-fill the column before the added space.

Martin_S___Author

Participating Frequently

"The biggest advantage of using space befor/after is that it is ignored if it falls at the top of a column"

Thanks Peter, for explaining this. I can see it working in my document now that I've made adjustments. Great!

I'd still like to know what people normally do when they want text on the last line of the text frame, without justifying the text with text frame options. do they do it manually by increasing character spacing in one of the paragraphs? If so, when they revise the document, do they reverse these changes? how do they remember which paragraphs they've changed?

Anyway, thanks again

John Hawkinson

Inspiring

Ouch!

I'm standing in the corner now. You guys are perfectly correct, but I might still be right about the reason. Do type designers read the sports page?

Well, they should (I was "born without the sports gene"). Sports presents some fascinating issues in design in general, and even for typography in specific, because of the large amount of tabular data. It's similar to the financial pages in that regards.

Please see the discussion in Edward Tufte's book Beautiful Evidence, in part excerpted in the "Sports graphics" thread on edwardtufte.com — scroll down to the 5th reply, from Tufte himself, with page images from the book.

P

peter minneapolis

Participating Frequently

charlie5000 wrote:
Hi, is there an orphan/widow (???) function in indesign? I am creating a document, with three to four paragraphs per page, and a blank line between paragraphs, but I don't want any blank lines at the bottom or top of any pages. Is this something one has to sort out manually, page by page? Just curious

Best practice in smart writing tools is not to use blank lines between paragraphs, but instead, to use the paragraph properties space before/above and/or space below/after, depending on your preferences and the documents needs.

As noted already, the keep paragraph property controls how many lines appear together before or after a frame, column, or page break. It's possible to define how many lines within a paragraph are kept together, and also how many lines in a following paragraph are kept with a paragraph.

Read about Keep in Help.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

Martin_S___Author

Participating Frequently

I have reformatted my document based on the advice. Now I'm working with paragraphs separated by spacing whch I've set in the paragraph style (thanks Peter Spier, and peter); I also applied "keep" options (thanks Daniel). And thanks Michael for the help. I still have the original problem though, which I did not express clearly. In the screencap I attached on the left page there is a space at the bottom of the last paragraph. In most books I open there is no such space. But how do you get rid of it? As I think FivePica suggests, do you do it manually? That is, do you increase the spacing between characters of one of the paragraphs on the left page until it forces another line? In which case you would then have to remove spacing between the paragaph on left page bottom and right page top to make sure that spacing doesn't appear at the top of the right page. But what if there are revisions a few pages back? You may then have to add space again between those two paragraphs. I don't suppose there is any automatic way to remove/add spacing depending on where paragraphs start or end relative to text frame. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

FivePicaPica

Inspiring

I think the OP is talking just about the blank lines. In that case the keep options wouldn't help. I'm not sure of a non-manual way to do what you're asking, without setting up equally complicated paragraph styles.

Daniel Flavin

Inspiring

It's referred to as Keep - From your paragraph style panel -

Paragraph Style Options > Keep Options

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