Widows and Orphans - Taking Control

[Themus]

Quick question. Is there any way to control widows and orphans in an ePub. I spent 15 years in electronic pre-press and the perfection in me wishes my ePub to look the best possible. Hence, I don't like single lines at the bottom of a page or the start of a new page.

Seems like it would be trick to control this in an ePub when it is put on so many different devices. Still, I thought I would ask the experts in the ePub field.

Mega thanks as always!

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Themus

Quick question. Is there any way to control widows and orphans in an ePub. I spent 15 years in electronic pre-press and the perfection in me wishes my ePub to look the best possible. Hence, I don't like single lines at the bottom of a page or the start of a new page.

Seems like it would be trick to control this in an ePub when it is put on so many different devices. Still, I thought I would ask the experts in the ePub field.

Mega thanks as always!

I use external fonts on my ePubs and also an external css file. I include settings for widows and orphans in the file (I think it helps but I won't swear that it helps.)

html, body {
font-family: "Futura", sans-serif;
widows: 0;
orphans: 0;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}

You might be able to add the code for widows and orphans to the extra css prior to conversion in Calibre or open the ePub in Sigil and add in the widows and orphans code to css file directly.

I have no real expertise but this might lead you in the right direction.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Themus

Quick question. Is there any way to control widows and orphans in an ePub.

I'm not an EPUB expert, but I've always believed that EPUBs and other ebook reflowable formats don't really have the concept of a page, which is where widow and orphan control matters. Certainly I can show text belonging to part of a paragraph at the top/bottom of the screen, and the part I decide to show might have what looks like a widow or orphan, depending on my screen width and viewing start point, but these pseudo-widows and pseudo-orphans won't match yours if you have another screen width. I'd think that if you didn't want these pseudo-widows and pseudo-orphans to display, that would be a setting in my viewer, not in the EPUB.