[css-text] Rename `text-wrap-style: avoid-orphans`

[kizu]

Following the resolution in #3473 (comment), opening an issue. I will copy my comment from that issue:

---

In various recent typographic contexts, words like “widows” and “orphans” can be considered insensitive, and also can be easily confused between themselves, with people often using one when meaning another.

From wikipedia

Source

Widow (sometimes called orphan)

A paragraph-ending line that falls at the beginning of the following page or column, thus separated from the rest of the text. Mnemonically, a widow is "alone at the top" (of the family tree but, in this case, of the page).

Orphan (sometimes called widow)

A paragraph-opening line that appears by itself at the bottom of a page or column, thus separated from the rest of the text. Mnemonically, an orphan is "alone at the bottom" (of the family tree but, in this case, of the page).

Runt (sometimes called widow or orphan)

A word, part of a word, or a very short line that appears by itself at the end of a paragraph. Mnemonically still "alone at the bottom", just this time at the bottom of a paragraph. Orphans of this type give the impression of too much white space between paragraphs.

By this definition, this property should've been called `avoid-runts`, for example, which would be even harder for people to understand (and would also be insensitive, as it also seems to be used as a derogatory term).

---

For example, Ellen Lupton writes about this in her “Thinking with Type” book, on page 128, and proposes a term “short lines” instead of “orphans”.

Given the current description of text-wrap-style: avoid-orphans starts as “Specifies the UA should avoid excessively short last lines,” I propose renaming the value to avoid-short-lines (could be more explicit as avoid-short-last-lines, but this is probably too much)

---

In the meeting and in IRC, there were two questions brought up:

1. Should the name be avoid-short-lines or avoid-short-last-lines? Just avoid-short-lines might be a bit too vague, and authors could expect that short lines on other lines could also be avoided.

2. There are already widows and orphans properties in CSS.

My thoughts about these:

1. The current spec already allows UA to decide against improving the last line, so having the avoid-short-lines not doing something that they expect will be already an issue. I also think that a case when there are short lines in the middle of the text are relatively rare. It happens only when there are very long words with a short word between, and in the majority of cases, people want to fix the last line specifically. So, when an author trying to solve this problem would see the avoid-short-lines available, they will understand that it will solve it. The opposite: an author looking at the available values and wondering when they could use one is a much more rare case.

2. I'd vote to rename these two, but probably in a separate issue: [css-break] Rename and/or reimagine widows and orphans #11286. While these properties exist, their support is very uneven, with Firefox not implementing them yet, and other browsers having an uneven support for them.

---

I did also write a blog post about this.

[meyerweb]

Would changing the value to avoid-runts, or possibly avoid-leading-runts and avoid-trailing-runts, address the concerns raised?

[kizu]

Would changing the value to avoid-runts, or possibly avoid-leading-runts and avoid-trailing-runts, address the concerns raised?

Yes, the Wikipedia entry also mentions this word for this specific case. I did encounter it there for the first time in this context, so from a perspective of an author unfamiliar with this term, it won't be as discoverable as avoid-short-lines.

That said, when I looked into the dictionaries, one of the definitions of “runt” is also derogatory:

For example, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/runt:

3. usually disparaging : a person of small stature

In other common dictionaries, I did not find the typographic meaning as well. Looking at some other books on typography that I have which mention orphans and widows, I did not find the mention of “runts” there as well. So I am not sure where this term comes from, and it is unlikely to be widely known.

[svgeesus]

Being Scottish I am familiar with all three meanings listed in Merriam-Webster. The first (remnant plant part) is archaic and I have rarely heard it used. The second is common, usually for a litter of pigs but also cats or dogs, and carries an implication not only of size but also weakness and unfitness for life:

We lost one of the piglets last night but no wonder, it was the runt of the litter

There is a clear derogatory connotation and, especially if replacing widow and orphan for cultural sensitivity reasons, runt would be a spectacularly bad choice.

[jensimmons]

We definitely need to rename this property. In part, because a single word left alone at the end of a paragraph is called a "widow", not an "orphan". So even if we wanted to continue using the traditional word for this, it should be avoid-widows. The text-wrap-style: avoid-orphans rule would mean avoiding having a word all by itself on a single line at the beginning of the paragraph — which makes no sense at all.

I agree however, that in 2025, we should rename these terms, not carry them even further into the future. Even the word "widow" as a term for human is frustrating. It's deeply rooted in the idea that women cannot live on their own, that there's something very wrong with a woman being single. She should go from her father's house to her husband's house, and if her husband dies, she needs to be labeled by society with an especially-tragic term, since she is now destined to poverty and hardship, since only men can properly hold careers and own a household.

So what do we rename this to? I believe avoid-short-last-line might be the best we can do.

It should be line not lines because it's about the length of the very last line, not the last 2-3 lines. In fact, the second-and-third-to-last lines are likely to get shorter, not longer, when this is applied (as some of the words from those lines are moved down to the last line).

avoid is good — it's sets the stage, we are avoiding something
short is a strong way to say what's wrong, we don't like something far too short
last-line is descriptive. It also works in all writing modes.

It's tempting to keep going on a search for the perfect different phrase that will trigger people's memory of this thing. But that doesn't exist. "Widow" is what western typography calls it and what art schools / graphic design classes teach. Most people have never heard of this concept — that it's bad for the last line of a paragraph to be too short. Without having a pre-conceived notion for this idea, the CSS value has to explain it.

Is there something shorter and easier to remember than text-wrap-style: avoid-short-last-line? Maybe we don't need to "avoid" something, but more directly state the result we want?

• text-wrap-style: avoid-short-last-line
• text-wrap-style: longer-last-line
• text-wrap-style: long-last-line

It might feel tempting to talk about words & use something like avoid-single-word, but that's a terrible idea, given the commitment to ensure CSS represents all languages and scripts, not just English/Latin-alphabetic scripts. The term we chose must support character-based languages, and "word" isn't applicable in that context.

[jensimmons]

I do like this set of options:

• text-wrap: balance;
• text-wrap: pretty;
• text-wrap: longer-last-line;
• text-wrap: wrap;

[jfkthame]

I agree that terminology involving widows and/or orphans here is problematic, as they are not widely understood, and even within typographic circles, usage is inconsistent and confusing. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans)

text-wrap: avoid-short-last-line seems better than other options such as longer-last-line, in my opinion. A property text-wrap: longer-last-line is unclear (longer than what?). It sounds like it's asking for the last line of the block to be made longer than the other lines, which is not at all what is intended.

[jensimmons]

For anyone wondering the source for my assertion that it should be avoid-widows, not avoid-orphans… Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style best explained which is which (in the context of first/last lines of a paragraph ending up on by themselves at the beginning/end of a column) on page 43-44 (emphasis added):

The typographic terminology is telling. Isolated lines created when paragraphs begin on the last line of a page are known as orphans. They have no past, but they do have a future, and they need not trouble the typographer. The stub-ends left when paragraphs end on the first line of a page are called widows. They have a past but not a future, and they look foreshortened and forlorn. It is the custom — in most, if not in all, the world’s typographic cultures — to give them one additional line for company. This rule is applied in close conjunction with the next.

[jensimmons]

Ah, I agree "longer" could be understood to mean longer than the rest of the lines. That's misleading. So perhaps this set of options:

• text-wrap: balance;
• text-wrap: pretty;
• text-wrap: avoid-short-last-line;
• text-wrap: wrap;

[jensimmons]

Can anyone think of any alternative names that we might use instead of this?

text-wrap: avoid-short-last-line;

[sturobson]

text-wrap: tidy; - make all the text nice and tidy without a hair out of place.

[stevefulghum]

How about ‘text-wrap: avoid-singles’? It’s linguistically simple and reasonably descriptive about what’s being done.