Widows and orphans
The pairing of the two terms with their definitions has no consistent standard across the industry; some sources use the opposite meanings as others.
Additionally, runts (which varying sources also call widows or orphans) are cases where a paragraph anywhere on a page ends with a very short final line.
Regarding page design and the layout of the text, the 15th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style (2003) indicates that an edited manuscript should have neither widows nor orphans, even if their elimination leaves blank space at the bottom of the page or of the column of text.
In web-publishing, this is typically accomplished by concatenating the words in question with a non-breaking space and, if available, by utilizing the orphans: and widows: attributes in Cascading Style Sheets.
In technical writing, where a single source may be published in different formats, with the viewer's expectation of viewing content in different sizes and resolutions, the paragraph settings automatically prevent widows and orphans.
The first line of a paragraph beginning at the end of a page (highlighted green) is called an orphan (sometimes called a widow ).
The last line of a paragraph continuing on to a new page (highlighted yellow) is a widow (sometimes called an orphan ).