

MICROSOFT WORD WIDOW ORPHAN SETTING HOW TO
Everything over 20 might do more harm than good.Ī good question to which I've no good answer is, how to convert the %-Letter Spacing in EM units. A tracking between 10-15 is still OK but perceivable. Another Rule of thumb: a Letter Spacing / Tracking between 5-10 is trouble-free and hard to recognise with the naked eye. By experience, I found this Rule of thumb: a Glyph Scaling of -1% (99%) has the same effect in space optimisation as a - 5 Tracking Value. Therefore a 90% Word spacing (-10%), equals a Tracking somehow between - 20/-30, depending on the font. Most fonts have a Word Space somehow between 200 and 300 units. A 10% Word spacing equals a Tacking Value of 25 (units). The average Word Spacing in a font is 1/4 of an EM, which is 250 units. The Letter Spacing has the most significant effect, followed by the Glyph Scaling the Word Spacing has the slightest impact. The %values are very abstract (at least to most of the designers I know).īut you can approximately convert the %-values into EM-units to get a better feeling for what these %-values mean. > a Glyph Scaling somehow between 1-3% you practically can’t see with the naked eye. Left-aligned columns this is very annoying and time-consuming.įor a Body Tex (justified) I use usually these settings for a line length between 45-75 characters: I don't know how you think about this issue going manually through the text to eliminate these 1-letter last words especially in This issue I also solve in ID with a GREP.
The possibility to force-prevent a «SINGEL LETTER LAST WORD» in a line. Would be great if AP would offer this possibility in the future. Would be thrilled to have as automation in AP:Ī checkbox which prevents hyphening a Word in the 1st line of a column! There are other two hyphen related functions which I could imagine that many designers The Paragraph end zone has non-effect on a justified text. In ID the Paragraph end zone in the Hyphenation section effects only left-aligned/ right-aligned/ text. If you made the right settings in the Justification pane (see below my standard settings).

from my experience, they do not make the line before to loose or too tight ( Paragraph Composer). If you force two words/runts in the last line of a paragraph with a No Break to stay together. Would be great if AD would have this one day. 10 characters at the end of a paragraph / not at the end of a column which is an orphan.įor runts, iD does not offer an easy 1-click automated process which is annoying. However, having an automated process (GREP) is from my experience much better to get rid of runts.įor runts, I intend max. The alternative is to change as Bhikkhu pointed out to change manually the tracking. But the great advantage is the a utomation. By the way, InDesign is not offering thisįunctionality and is not using the term «runt».Ī GREP style for the Runts is just an annoying workaround. How much signs are permissible for « Runts». I would further suggest giving the user in the Flow Window the possibility to define That’s why I (Blatner) like the term “runt” when talking about short last-lines in a paragraph. Widows are single last lines stranded at the top of a column.) (Orphans are single first lines stranded at the bottom of a column. The terms Orphans and Widows are reserved for other typographic problems. Those terms definitely do not describe short last lines at the end of a paragraph. while some people call these widows and other people call them orphans, I agree with David Blatner how proposed the term «runt» and who pointed out that: You called them widows which I think is confusing and not correct in this context. Some call them orphans or widows others call them runts. or a short lines of text with up to 10-signs at the last line of a paragraph.Īn exact term of this typographic crime is vague and (historically) does not exist at all. In typography, a «runt» occurs when the last line of a paragraph ends with: I suggest using the term « runt» instead of « widowed».ĭavid Blatner introduced the term « runt» for this typographic problem. In this context, the term widow is not a well-chosen terminology.Īctually, it is wrong. You used in your Flow Window the term « Prevent widowed last lines».
