Expert: Roy Wilhelm - 5/18/2011

Question
Hi Roy, I am working for a publishing company where we specialize in trade magazines in English language. I am using InDesign 4 on Mac platform. As part of our guidelines for all our magazines, we avoid widow words. We require at least 2 words to end a paragraph on a new line. This is not necessarily at top of a column, but even if there are 5 paragraphs in a column, we do not want to end any paragraph with a single word  as the last line (hope you got what I am trying to say). We need at least two words. Is there any way to avoid one word at the end of paragraph on a new line? At present I do a force enter the second last word so at least there are two words in the last line of a para. Your help will be very much appreciated. Cheers, Vijay

Answer
Hi Vijay,

InDesign does not currently have automation for avoiding widows. You may already know this, but you are able to adjust your Keep Options, which allow you to define the max number of lines left behind and carried forward in a column.

Aside from doing the forced line break as you are currently, you may want to investigate this method:

http://www.pdsassoc.com/index.php?Nav=tipssub&Ban=DeruntingParagraphs&Info=tipsC...

I hope this helps!

Roy