Widows and orphans have long been considered typography “crimes” resulting from laziness of the typesetter. Orphans are short top lines of a page or column and are even more distracting to the reader. The wider the line and the tighter the paragraph spacing, the more distracting the widow. A widow generally leaves too much white space at the end of a line, making it look like an extra blank line. A widow could be one word, the end of a hyphenated word, or two/three words left alone on the last line of a paragraph. Widows are short last lines of a paragraph. The longer the line, the more distracting is a bad rag. For optimum readability, typographers have long suggested that one limit line length to 40-80 characters, including spaces, 65 characters being ideal. By changing line length, we can learn the best line length for specific typefaces and font sizes to achieve a decent rag.

One important variable in creating a good rag is line length. Like many other typographic skills, the ability to do these things well requires time spent learning the techniques and time spent in practice. If those changes fail to give you the rag you want, you can then make slight adjustments in tracking, kerning, column width, page margins, or point sizes. You can also change your hyphenation rules and edit your text. The easiest thing to do is to use manual line breaks where you want them. In the two type arrangements of the Bringhurst quote above, the dramatically uneven text-line edges of the layout on the left could be called a “ bad rag” as compared to the more even edges of the “ good rag” on the right. A not-so-good rag bounces the eye back and forth from line to line creating distracting white spaces in the margin. If the text is left-aligned, the rag is on the right side. When setting type with a ragged edge, print typographers have long given attention to the shape of the rag, the goal being “a good rag.”Ī good rag is one where the lines move in and out in small increments. A “rag” in typography is the uneven side of a paragraph where the text is aligned on the other side.

Widows and orphans in typography