Re: widows vs orphans

[Steve Izma]

On Thu, Jun 15, 2023 at 03:40:47PM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Subject: Re: widows vs orphans
> 
> At 2023-06-15T13:41:38-0500, Dave Kemper wrote:
> > Although Wikipedia says there's no agreement on the
> > definitions of "widow" and "orphan"
> > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans), web
> > research has led me to conclude that there's a stronger
> > consensus than Wikipedia credits: that orphans are at page
> > bottom and widows at page top.
> 
> This convention is difficult for me to internalize.
> 
> > As two data points, these are the definitions used by
> > typography expert Robert Bringhurst (as quoted long ago on
> > this list by Steve Izma
> > (http://lists.gnu.org/r/groff/2004-03/msg00091.html), himself
> > a knowledgeable and experienced typographer),
> 
> I have his book and started to read it.  The early material has
> interest but is not of utility to me as a groff developer.
> Perhaps my organs of artistic appreciation are withered and
> insensitive.

I hope it doesn't sound too aggressive for me to suggest that
someone who is regularly typesetting for *print* (especially
books and book-like productions) would find Bringhurst's
observations and suggestions useful on a daily basis. But most of
his ideas have little application for material meant to be
presented on a character display (i.e., man pages). This
especially applies to the very high significance of white space
on a printed page -- it represents important boundaries to the
text, where the mind gets a chance to take a breath and the
amount of white space relates to the kind of break one is
supposed to take between digesting the concepts in the text.
It's really hard to do this in a subtle way on a mono-spaced
character display. But I think groff is absolutely wonderful for
allowing control over white space (usually to one-thousandth of a
point) on a printed page. Much of Bringhurst's book is about how
to provide helpful rhythms of thinking through good typography.

Thanks to Dave for reminding me of the exchange about widows and
orphans that took place almost twenty years ago. One of its main
points was to argue in favour of final aesthetic adjustments
being made by humans as opposed to algorithms. I was glad to have
my memory refreshed about this, especially in respect to recent
debates about the "paragraph-at-once" algorithms (which have
never worked in a satisfying way to me when I have needed to
typeset with TeX).

To clarify Bringhurst's suggestion that "widows" should be
accommodated but "orphans" need not be worrisome, I'll quote
again the passage from his book:

  The typographic terminology is telling. Isolated lines created
  when paragraphs *begin* on the *last* line of a page are known
  as *orphans*. They have no past, but they do have a future, and
  they need not trouble the typographer. The stub-ends left when
  paragraphs *end* on the *first* line of a page are called
  *widows*. They have a past, but not a future, and they look
  foreshortened and forlorn. It is the custom -- in most, if not
  all, the world's typographic cultures -- to give them one
  additional line for company. (Robert Bringhurst, *The Elements
  of Typographic Style*, Hartley & Marks, 2012)

Note that this is about short lines, not single words, although
somewhere in the discussion someone has mentioned the (usually
good) idea of avoiding single words at the end of paragraphs.

                -- Steve

-- 
Steve Izma
-
Home: 35 Locust St., Kitchener, Ontario, Canada  N2H 1W6
E-mail: sizma@golden.net  phone: 519-745-1313
cell (text only; not frequently checked): 519-998-2684

==
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best – and
therefore never scrutinize or question.
    -- Stephen Jay Gould, *Full House: The Spread of Excellence
       from Plato to Darwin*, 1996