Two related typesetting defects involving isolated lines at column or page breaks. A widow is the last line of a paragraph that falls alone at the top of a new column or page, stranded from its paragraph body. An orphan is the first line of a paragraph that appears alone at the bottom of a column or page, separated from the lines that follow. Both disrupt reading flow and visual rhythm. Professional typesetting systems provide controls to suppress widows and orphans by adjusting page breaks, Tracking, or the number of lines kept together.
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