Comment by raincole
15 hours ago
I did't know what widows and orphans are so I looked it up.
> Widow (sometimes called orphan)
> Orphan (sometimes called widow)
> Runt (sometimes called widow or orphan)
Yeah I'm glad we programmers are not the only ones bad at naming things...
I am firmly convinced that the customary mapping of widow/orphan is back to front. You’re really trying to convince me that the one that has been cut off from its antecedents is the widow? It should obviously be the orphan.
So, no wonder people confuse them, because the popular mapping is wrong.
> It should obviously be the orphan.
But it isn’t obvious that a line cut off from its descendants should be a widow, so that mapping isn’t ideal either.
I propose “bereaved” — a parent cut off from its children.
Yes! All the typographical techniques and terminology is fascinating (and confusing at times). Widow and orphan control really fight against text justification. Finding the right balance is tricky, but LaTeX has all the little knobs to tweak and find what's right for your uses (fiction for me).