Quote:
Originally Posted by AliceWonder
(btw OT I don't know what widows and orphans options actually do, was just suggested I should have them - but in my limited testing the readers I usef seem to ignore them as I still had widows and orphans so I may remove them)
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This is all my opinion so likely not be worth much to anyone else.
Widows and orphans are remnants of printed books and should not be used for ebooks. Widows happen when the last line of a paragraph is forced to the next page or column while orphans are when the first line of a paragraph is on one page/column and the rest of the paragraph is on the next page/column. The widows/orphans setting says how many lines will have to be kept together -- the 2 says two lines so a minimum of two lines would be kept together. My personal preference is setting both to 1 (by definition, the value must be a positive integer so 0 is not permitted though I've seen it used all too often) to override any default values (usually 2 or 3) used by the renderer.
As for remembering which are orphans and which are widows? Orphans are left alone at the beginning, widows are left alone at the end.