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widows

Summary

Defines the minimum number of lines that can appear in the beginning of a new page. In typography, a widow is the last line of a paragraph appearing alone at the top of a page, which is considered to look awkward. Setting the widows property to an integer higher than 1 prevents this.

On a non-paged media, like screen, the widows CSS property has no effect. It can have a number value or it can inherit the values from the parent element.

Overview table

Initial value
2
Applies to
All elements
Inherited
Yes
Media
visual
Computed value
As specified
Animatable
No

CSS Object Model Property
:

Percentages
N/A

Syntax

  • widows: inherit
  • widows: integer

Values

integer
Denotes the minimum number of lines that can appear alone on the top of a new page. If the value is not positive, the declaration is invalid.
inherit
Takes the same specified value as the property for the element’s parent.

Examples

The following style rule ensures that at least three lines of a paragraph appear at the top (widows) and bottom (orphans) of each printed page.

@media print {
    p {
        widows: 3;
        orphans: 3;
    }
}

Notes

Remarks

The widows property takes precedence over orphans.

Related specifications

CSS Fragmentation Module Level 3
W3C Working Draft
CSS Multi-column Layout Module
W3C Candidate Reccomendation
CSS Level 2 (Revision 1)
W3C Recommendation

See also

Related articles

Paged Media

External resources

http://xhtml.com/en/css/reference/widows/

Related pages

Attributions