Yes, Word offers widow and orphan protection. And therein lies the problem. But the problem may also occur in higher end DTP and page layout programs, too. What happens with widow and orphan protection turned on is that Word doesn't allow a single line at the bottom of a page or at the top of a page. Either way, it kicks at least one line from one page to the next. If the facing page doesn't have a widow (or an orphan on the page after that), one of two facing pages has fewer lines than the other, and the bottoms of the text blocks don't align across the two facing pages. It's easy enough to overlook that and just call it good, but it's not really "right" from a book design perspective. One work-around is to adjust the line spacing on one of the two pages, but then the lines don't all match up across the two pages -- and they're supposed to. That's the conundrum that led to my question. Which is more important, keeping the lines aligned across pages, or avoiding windows and orphans? Is there a way to do both? If so -- what's the secret? I'm looking at one novel on my desk (paperback, and pretty much a mass market edition) that allows orphans (but apparently not widows), but also doesn't have the same number of lines on each page. Facing pages have the same number of lines, but there are numerous instances throughout the book where one pair of pages has one line fewer than the pair of pages before or after it. How do y'all deal with widows and orphans?
Update: I found the answer. And the answer is ... tracking. In Word, that translates to "character spacing" in the Format > Font menu, but it's the same thing. http://birdsbeforethestorm.net/2010/12/widows-and-orphans-in-book-design/
I had a lot of fun with this when I was laying out my print book (read: Had to put a ton of work into it), but I think it was worth it. I wasn't out solely to eliminate widows and orphans, but also to purge out single words on the bottom lines of paragraphs and words hyphenated across pages. Keep in mind I don't use MS Word, I use WordPerfect. But I think the capabilities of the latest releases are probably the same. I set my top margins in stone, of course. One style for chapter beginnings; another, with page numbers, for the chapter text. But I had a range for the bottom margins, more or less than the dimension in the document settings. If I could get it to work with no widows or orphans at the standard height, fine. If I couldn't, I gave myself a limit as to how many fractions of an inch I could go above or below it. The strict rule was that the bottom margins had to match across facing pages. How to do that? First approach, use tracking to eliminate any lone words at the bottom of any paragraph and bring them into the line above. Often, that was enough to adjust the text on the page and get rid of the widows and orphans If the outlier was a long word and tracking didn't work, I'd rewrite the paragraph to do away with it (which is why I swear that next time I'll format my print book before I finalize the ebook). Sometimes I'd use tracking to make a line or lines longer, so I'd get the two lines I needed. If that didn't work? I adjusted the line spacing. The font I chose looks best at 1.1, but I could go down to 1.0 or up to 1.2 if I had to. I don't know about Word, but WPX6 will let you fine-tune that to the hundredth (don't ask me if that's by the inch or the point, because I don't know). Sometimes I achieved even bottom margins with no widows and orphans by tweaking the spacing I left between scenes. Those spaces had little icons in them as fleurons, so some variation in height wasn't noticeable. I don't think so, anyway. Like I said, it took work, but I'm glad I put it in. And if you're wondering, single-line paragraphs could do whatever they liked. I didn't insist they go walking in pairs.
Single words (or very short lines) at the end of paragraphs are called "runts." Yes, those should also be avoided. I hadn't considered hypenation across pages, but that would be distracting to a reader. I expect so. That is preferred by the pros, for sure. I couldn't agree more about finalizing the print book first. It's much easier to just strip out all (or most) formatting to convert the print manuscript to an e-book than it is to go the other way. Yes, Word also allows setting the line spacing to hundredths. (And, like you, I don't know what the hundredths refer to. I know I've been using 1.08 with Caslon Pro and it seems to look about right. That's a great idea, if you use glyphs to separate scenes. The same could be done if you use a simple line for that purpose. Yep -- it's work. I guess there's no escaping it if you want to do your book "right."
