widowpenalty

Widowpenalty refers to a typographic mechanism used to discourage the occurrence of widows and orphans in text layout. In typography, a widow is a short final line of a paragraph that appears alone at the top of a page or column, while an orphan is a short line that appears alone at the bottom of a page. The widowpenalty is a numeric value assigned during line- and page-breaking that increases the cost of breaks creating a widow. Higher penalties reduce the likelihood of such breaks, and very high values can effectively prohibit them, prompting different line breaks or page breaks to occur.

In practice, widowpenalty is implemented in typesetting systems and word processors to improve readability and visual balance. In TeX and its descendants, authors can set the widowpenalty (often alongside related penalties) to influence the page-breaking algorithm. In CSS for paged media, the widows and orphans properties provide analogous control over how many lines must be kept together at page boundaries. Many modern word processors and desktop publishing programs also offer widow/orphan control settings, with options for automatic handling or manual adjustments.

The use of widowpenalty involves a trade-off between typographic aesthetics and page density. While avoiding widows and orphans generally enhances readability, overly aggressive penalties can lead to looser lines or increased whitespace, affecting overall layout.