# Can Microsoft Word 2010 selectively prevents orphans from appearing while allowing widows? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 11, 2012, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937 "2012-07-11T22:32:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2012, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/1 "2012-07-11T22:32:09Z")
I know Word 2007 doesn’t. I’d explain what the terms _widow_ and _orphan_ mean in typesetting, but I figure anybody who can answer already knows. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/2 "2012-07-12T01:45:11Z")
I only see a single checkbox for “Widow/Orphan control”. ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/3 "2012-07-12T01:52:12Z")
You can control the pagination individually for each paragraph. If one of them is breaking into a widow or orphan, you can fix that individual paragraph, which is not exactly what you’re asking for, but may be a usable workaround. Right-click anywhere in the paragraph, choose Paragraph in the menu that appears, and then go to the Line and Page Breaks section. There are several options in there for keeping all lines of a paragraph together, forcing the paragraph to stay with the next paragraph, etc. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/4 "2012-07-12T02:21:34Z")
So after slaughtering a man and killing all his children, you have the decency to leave the wife alive. How sweet of you. But I learned two new terms. Thanks for the knowledge-broadening. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2012, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/5 "2012-07-12T19:14:58Z")
> [@MsWhatsit](#): > > You can control the pagination individually for each paragraph. If one of them is breaking into a widow or orphan, you can fix that individual paragraph, which is not exactly what you’re asking for, but may be a usable workaround. Right-click anywhere in the paragraph, choose Paragraph in the menu that appears, and then go to the Line and Page Breaks section. There are several options in there for keeping all lines of a paragraph together, forcing the paragraph to stay with the next paragraph, etc. Gotcha. That’s exactly the setup in Word 2007. I was looking for a global fix. Obrigado, all. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/6 "2012-07-13T00:35:48Z")
I don’t know anything about these settings in particular, but, most of the time, you can select all paragraphs to give them all the same options. If so, there’s probably a way to edit the normal.dot file to make that the default for all documents you create in Word. It won’t necessarily work for pre-existing documents, though. If you can’t have every paragraph with the same settings, then all I can suggest is saving as a Text file and using some other piece of software. I’m sure TeX can handle it. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/7 "2012-07-13T09:39:36Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > I’d explain what the terms _widow_ and _orphan_ mean in typesetting, but I figure anybody who can answer already knows. By all means do. I understand what an orphan is. In Swedish it would be _horunge_ = _whore’s child_, but I can’t figure out what you mean by _widow_. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/8 "2012-07-13T12:04:50Z")
The [Wikipedia page](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans) might be helpful. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2012, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/9 "2012-07-13T12:16:33Z")
Thank you. It seems both would be called _horunge_ in Sweden. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2012, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/10 "2012-07-15T16:45:11Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > I don’t know anything about these settings in particular, but, most of the time, you can select all paragraphs to give them all the same options. If so, there’s probably a way to edit the normal.dot file to make that the default for all documents you create in Word. It won’t necessarily work for pre-existing documents, though. > > If you can’t have every paragraph with the same settings, then all I can suggest is saving as a Text file and using some other piece of software. I’m sure TeX can handle it. Word 2007 allows one to suppress _both_ widows and orphans, and by using styles one can select some paragraphs to be formatted that way and others not to be. That’s trivially easy. But it lacks the ability to suppress widows while allowing orphans, or vice versa, something WordPerfect was able to do twenty years go. This vexes me because while widows don’t bother me, orphans do; they’re much uglier. I was asking because I was wondering if the latest version has corrected that issue. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/11 "2012-07-17T04:54:23Z")
> [@Floater](#): > > Thank you. It seems both would be called _horunge_ in Sweden. I’d actually never heard of widows either, though the naming makes sense. When I first saw this thread, I read it as “windows,” and assumed it was something like “rivers”: long holes in text caused by spaces lining up on subsequent lines. ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/12 "2012-07-17T09:23:21Z")
I did look it up in the Swedish Wikipedia and whoever had written the article mentioned _widow_ as a synonym of _orphan_, so apparently it’s used here as well, although I have never heard it. ---
**Author:** ![Dervorin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/13 "2012-07-17T11:51:13Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > So after slaughtering a man and killing all his children, you have the decency to leave the wife alive. How sweet of you. > > But I learned two new terms. Thanks for the knowledge-broadening. If the wife was left alive, the children wouldn’t be orphans, would they? So what you have to do is kill a man and his first wife, and all his children by that marriage, and leave his second wife alive. Then, and only then, do you have dead orphans and a live widow. I may not be contributing anything very useful to this thread, but that’s never stopped me anyway! ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2012, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-microsoft-word-2010-selectively-prevents-orphans-from-appearing-while-allowing-widows/627937/14 "2012-07-17T16:08:56Z")
> [@Dervorin](#): > > If the wife was left alive, the children wouldn’t be orphans, would they? So what you have to do is kill a man and his first wife, and all his children by that marriage, and leave his second wife alive. Then, and only then, do you have dead orphans and a live widow. > > I may not be contributing anything very useful to this thread, but that’s never stopped me anyway! I meant for creating a widow. I think the orphans will have to be in a different family. Kill their parents, but allow for a rich benefactor in their future who used to be a convict but was saved through kindness/naivete.