- From: Tony Graham <tgraham@antenna.co.jp>
- Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 16:07:06 +0000
- To: www-style@w3.org
On 07/01/2015 17:42, Lea Verou wrote: > On Jan 7, 2015, at 19:37, Glenn Adams <glenn@skynav.com> wrote: >> interesting that they call them 'widow' words, not orphan words, >> which shows that this terminology (either orphan or widow) is >> probably not good in this case; if i had to choose,i would have >> also called them widows, not orphans, based on the principle "an >> orphan is left behind, a widow goes on on alone". Since CSS and XSL have 'widows' for the minimum lines at the top of a page, it is arguably more consistent to use 'widows' for describing the minimum words left at the top of the page. > Yup, I noticed that too (though keep in mind that Antennahouse is > almost 100% non-native English speakers, and that is reflected in > the naming of several AH proprietary properties, as well as the rest > of the documentation). Perhaps a name like min-last-line-length or > min-last-line-words would be as explicit as possible, but a bit too > verbose. 'widow' and 'orphan' are two terms where people have chosen to disagree a long time ago: - "The Elements of Typographic Style" has "Isolated lines created when paragraphs _begin_ on the _last_ line of a page are known as _orphans_... The stub-ends left when paragraphs _end_ on the _first_ line of a page are called _widows_." - "Book Typography" by Mitchell and Wrightman has "orphan ... the last line of a paragraph falling at the top of a page" and "widow ... first line of a paragraph falling on the last line of a page". - "A Type Primer" by John Kane has "A widow is a short line of type left alone at the end of a column of text. An orphan is a short line of type left alone at the start of a new column." and includes a graphic that shows a one-word line in the middle of a column as being a widow. Regards, Tony Graham. -- Senior Architect XML Division Antenna House, Inc. ---- Skerries, Ireland tgraham@antenna.co.jp
Received on Friday, 16 January 2015 16:07:39 UTC