PROOFING TOOL

Widows and Orphans Checker

Paste a paragraph, pick the width of the column it will live in, and this tool breaks the lines the way the browser will, then underlines the ones that end in a single word or two. One click joins the final words with a non-breaking space, the classic fix, and the paragraph reads clean again. Everything runs in your browser.

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Try the Checker

Container width560px, the column your text renders in

Paste Your Copy

0 widows, 0 orphans

Rendered Result

Red underlines mark a flagged widow or orphan line. Move the slider to see how the breaks and the verdicts change with the column width.

A widow is the short line that closes a paragraph, a single word or a couple of words dangling alone on the final line. An orphan is the reverse: a lone word stranded at the start of a paragraph, or a single first line sitting alone at the bottom of a column.

Both are easy to fix once you can see them. This sample paragraph is long enough that its last line carries only a word or two at a typical column width. The classic fix is a non-breaking space between the final two words, which pulls the last word up onto the previous line.

Widows look accidental. Orphans look careless. A clean rag is the difference between typeset copy and a document that still needs a proofread. Paste a paragraph that ends with a single lonely word and the red underline will find it.

What the Fix Does

The fix all button joins the final two words of every paragraph with a non-breaking space. The last line can no longer begin with a lone word, so the pair wraps up together and the widow disappears. For paragraphs where even the two-word join cannot help, shorten the copy or widen the column instead.

p {
  /* keeps at least two words on the final line in supporting browsers */
  text-wrap: pretty;
}

Why a Lone Word at the End of a Paragraph Reads Wrong

Readers process paragraphs as shapes as much as sequences of words. A paragraph that ends with one word dangling on its own line creates a small visual hole: the right edge of the block jumps inward and the eye has to travel an extra, nearly empty line to reach the next paragraph. Repeated across a page, a few widows make typeset copy look unproofed even when every word is spelled correctly.

Print typesetters have controlled widows and orphans for centuries because ink and paper made the problem permanent. The web made it invisible to most writers, since a widow at one viewport width disappears at another. The tools that reflow text gave everyone an excuse to ignore line endings entirely. Yet the pages that feel carefully made, the ones readers describe as polished, are still the ones where paragraphs end with a reasonable word count on the last line.

How the Checker Works

The tool measures every word with the same font metrics the browser uses, then simulates greedy line breaking at the column width you set with the slider. Greedy is the exact algorithm CSS uses: fill a line with words until the next one does not fit, then start a new line. That means the simulated breaks match what the browser will actually render, not an estimate.

A paragraph is flagged when its final line carries one or two words, and a line count above one is required so a one-line paragraph is never misread as a widow. The same pass checks the first line: a paragraph whose first line holds a single word is the orphan case. Move the width slider and the verdict updates live, because a paragraph that is fine at 800px can produce a widow at 400px.

Two words on the last line is the standard cutoff rather than one, because a two-word ending like "the end" still looks stranded in a wide column. If your style is more relaxed, the underline on two-word endings is easy to ignore while the single-word cases still get caught.

The Non-Breaking Space Fix, and When It Fails

The traditional fix for a widow is to change the space between the last two words of the paragraph into a non-breaking space. The browser treats the pair as a unit, so when the second word no longer fits on its own, both words move up together. The fix works in any CMS, any email client, and any static site, because it is just a character in the text.

It fails in two situations. When the last line already holds two words and both are long, the joined pair may not fit on the previous line, and the widow merely moves up one word. When the paragraph is a single word wider than the column, no spacing trick can help. In both cases the real fixes are editing the copy, adjusting the column, or enabling the newer CSS text-wrap: pretty, which asks the browser to balance the final lines automatically.

A small note on the orphan check: single-word first lines are rare in ordinary prose, because a paragraph usually starts at the left margin with whatever word begins it. They appear when text is pasted from a layout that already inserted manual breaks, or when a heading sits on the same line as the first word of the paragraph below. If the checker never flags an orphan for your copy, that is the expected result, not a bug.

Where This Fits with the Other Tools

This checker is the line-ending pass in the same proofing sequence as the typography checker, which handles the character-level issues like quotes and dashes. Between the two, prose is clean at the character level and at the line level. The text measure tool sets the column width in the first place, since widows are mostly a symptom of lines that are too wide or too narrow for the type. Run it after the vertical rhythm calculator has fixed the spacing, and before the final check in the typography playground.

FAQ

What exactly is a widow in typography?: A widow is a short line that closes a paragraph: one word, or two very short words, sitting alone on the final line. It looks like an accident because the eye expects the paragraph to end near the right margin. The stricter print definition also calls the last line of a paragraph that lands at the top of a new page or column a widow.
What exactly is an orphan in typography?: An orphan has two classic forms. The first is a single word stranded on its own line at the beginning of a paragraph. The second is a lone first line of a paragraph sitting at the bottom of a column or page, separated from the rest of the paragraph. The first form is what a paste-based checker can find.
Why do widows and orphans matter on the web?: Because web text reflows with the viewport, widows appear and disappear as the reader resizes the window. A paragraph that looked clean at 1440px can end with a single dangling word at 1024px. They matter less than in print, but they still catch the eye on marketing pages where the copy is short and every paragraph gets read.
What is the difference between this and hyphenation?: Hyphenation breaks words to even out line endings. Widow control changes where the breaks fall by grouping the final words, without splitting any word. The two can be combined, but widow control is the safer default because it needs no language dictionary and never produces a wrong hyphenation.
Does text-wrap: pretty really work?: It is supported in current Chrome, Edge, and Safari, and it applies balanced line breaking to the last few lines of a paragraph so the final line holds at least a couple of words. Firefox has it behind a flag. Use it as a progressive enhancement, and keep the manual non-breaking-space fix for the paragraphs that matter most.
Is one word on the last line always wrong?: Not always. A dramatic single word can be intentional, like the last line of a poem or a slogan. The rule applies to body prose where the reader expects even, natural line endings. For centered or right-aligned text the check is less relevant, since the rag is deliberate.