InDesign has what’s called a Paragraph Composer which tries to optimize the length of each line within a paragraph. Perhaps not the most elegant solution you could finesse the other lines of text. This can create a domino effect that pushes a word on each of the subsequent lines to the next line, giving the last line of the paragraph more than one word (see Figure 3).įigure 3: Adding a soft return (holding down Shift when you press the Return key) re-flows the text and pushes part of “comparison” onto the last line, eliminating a widow.

Negative values decrease the space between letters, positive values increase it.įigure 2: Entering a value of -20 in the tracking field in InDesign allows the word “only” to move up a line, eliminating the widow.Ģ – Add a line break after a word. Sometimes, to get rid of a widow, I’ll look at the lines of type within a paragraph and see if I can add a line break by using a soft return (shift-return) to push one word to the next line. This spreads the letterspacing, causing smaller wordspacing.įigure 1: Adjust the tracking field in InDesign. If there is a line with some big rivers in it (space between the words), sometimes I’ll select the line and change the tracking to 20. What’s an em? It is a relative unit equal to the current point size of the type (1 em of 12 point type = 12 points, 1 em of 8 point type = 8 points, etc.). By the way, InDesign measures tracking in 1,000ths of an em. The human eye starts to notice type with letterspacing tighter than -20. If that doesn’t work, I try increments of -5 (-10, -15) until I get to -20. So I might enter a -5 value in the Tracking field of InDesign (see Figures 1 and 2). Small adjustments are less perceptible to the eye when the type is less than 14 points in size.

Below is a list of the 9, the least invasive methods are listed first.ġ – Adjust the letterspacing. This is almost always the first thing I try. There are about 9 different ways I’ve found to accomplish these tasks, some more invasive to your design and typography than others. Not only is the designer trying to fit the text within the space, but s/he is also trying to eliminate rivers (in justified text), widows and orphans. From brochures to long documents like books, magazines, etc., this is something that requires patience, finesse, and good judgement. Once you flow text into a layout, one of the most tedious and unnoticed tasks (unless you do it poorly, of course) is fitting body text into a given space. Or how to spend a few hours getting rid of widows, hyphens and getting body text to fit in its place.

Remove widows and orphans in word 2010