orphans

The orphans CSS property refers to the minimum number of lines in a block container that must be left at the bottom of the page. This property is normally used to control how page breaks occur.

Initial value	2
Applies to	block container elements
Inherited	yes
Media	visual, paged
Computed value	as specified
Animation type	discrete
Canonical order	the unique non-ambiguous order defined by the formal grammar

Syntax

/* Numerical value */
orphans: 3;

/* Global values */
orphans: inherit;
orphans: initial;
orphans: unset;

Values

<integer>

Only positive values are allowed.

inherit

Takes the same specified value as the property for the element's parent.

Formal syntax

<integer>

Example

CSS

div {
  background-color: #8cffa0;
  height: 150px;
  columns: 3;
  orphans: 3;
}

p {
  background-color: #8ca0ff;
}

p:first-child {
  margin-top: 0;
}

HTML

<div>
  <p>This is the first paragraph containing some text.</p>
  <p>This is the second paragraph containing some more text than the first one. It is used to demonstrate how widows work.</p>
  <p>This is the third paragraph. It has a little bit more text than the first one.</p>
</div>

Result

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
CSS Fragmentation Module Level 3 The definition of 'orphans' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	Extends orphans to apply to any type of fragment, like pages, regions or columns.
CSS Multi-column Layout Module The definition of 'orphans' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	Recommendations to consider widows in relation with columns
CSS Level 2 (Revision 1) The definition of 'orphans' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

See also

• widows
• paged_media