widows

When a paragraph is split over two pages in paged media, the widows CSS property defines the minimum number of lines that must be left at the top of the second page. In typography, a widow is the last line of a paragraph appearing alone at the top of a new page. Setting the widows property allows the prevention of single-line widows.

For non-paged media, like screen, the widows CSS property has no effect.

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

/* <integer> values */
widows: 2;
widows: 3;

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

Values

<integer>

Denotes the minimum number of lines that can stay alone on the top of a new page when a paragraph is split. If the value is not positive, the declaration is invalid.

Formal syntax

<integer>

Example

CSS

div {
  background-color: #8cffa0;
  columns: 3;
  widows: 2;
}

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

Browser Compatibility

See also

• orphans
• Paged Media