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Example of book typesetting widow

A widow appears alone at the top of a typeset book page.

Widow refers to very short lines of text that appear to dangle at the beginning of a page, without any additional lines from the same paragraph, leaving an excessive amount of white space. The term is often interchangeable with orphan, referring to the same occurrence at the end of a page. There is no consistent standard across the industry to determine the correct usage.

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