Last updated February 5, 2021
Something beautiful there is about letters in words across a page. We read for the pleasure of the eye as well as the mind’s sense of what the words mean.
To know just a bit about what makes a page of text beautiful to look at can increase our pleasure in reading and the likelihood that when we put our words on a page that they will be read by others. A “good rag” is part of that knowing-a-bit-more.
What is a Rag?
What is a Good Rag?
And Why Should We Care
A “rag” in typography is the uneven side of a paragraph where the text is aligned on the other side. So if the text is right-aligned,
the rag is on the left side.
If the text is left-aligned, the rag is on the right side. When setting type with a ragged edge, print typographers have long given attention to the shape of the rag, the goal being “a good rag.”
A good rag is one where the lines move in and out in small increments. A not-so-good rag bounces the eye back and forth from line to line creating distracting white spaces in the margin.
In the two type arrangements of the Bringhurst quote above, the dramatically uneven text-line edges of the layout on the left could be called a “bad rag” as compared to the more even edges of the “good rag” on the right.
What to Do with a Poor Rag?
The easiest thing to do is to use manual line breaks where you want them. You can also change your hyphenation rules and edit your text. If those changes fail to give you the rag you want, you can then make slight adjustments in tracking, kerning, column width, page margins, or point sizes. Like many other typographic skills, the ability to do these things well requires time spent learning the techniques and time spent in practice.
One important variable in creating a good rag is line length. By changing line length, we can learn the best line length for specific typefaces and font sizes to achieve a decent rag. For optimum readability, typographers have long suggested that one limit line length to 40-80 characters, including spaces, 65 characters being ideal. The longer the line, the more distracting is a bad rag.
A simple way to calculate the measure (best line length for font size) is to use Robert Bringhurst’s method which multiples the type size by 30. So if the type size is 10px, multiplying it by 30 gives you a measure of 300px or around 65 characters per line.
Antonio Carusone1Antonio Carusone, 8 Simple Typography Tips For Your Designs at smashingmagazine dot com, 2009.
p {
font-size: 10px;
max-width: 300px;
}
Software applications such as InDesign allow the user to make all these adjustments over large blocks of text, but other applications may not. For example, the paragraphs of this blog may be examples of not-so-great rags as this application (WordPress) does not allow me to work on the rag, and the look of the rag will depend on your browser and on the device you are using (tablet, phone, monitor).
The same typography skills needed to understand and set good rags are used in setting good justified text. For those interested in learning to master these typography skills, a good resource is Lynda.com. The courses taught by Nigel French (book, magazine, and e-book laytout/typography) on Lynda.com (now LinkedIn Learning) are especially helpful.
Widows & Orphans
Widows are short last lines of a paragraph. A widow could be one word, the end of a hyphenated word, or two/three words left alone on the last line of a paragraph. A widow generally leaves too much white space at the end of a line, making it look like an extra blank line. The wider the line and the tighter the paragraph spacing, the more distracting the widow.
Orphans are short top lines of a page or column and are even more distracting to the reader.
Widows and orphans have long been considered typography “crimes” resulting from laziness of the typesetter. However, today, it is often a matter of the writer having no idea that these are even problems.
Also, there is some debate among typographers about the definition of these terms. June 27, 2025 from Claude.ai:
“Yes, there is some disagreement about these definitions in the typography community. Some typographers define:
- Widow as the single line at the bottom of a page/column
- Orphan as the single line at the top of a page/column
This confusion exists because different style guides, typography books, and software programs have used conflicting definitions over the years. Even professional designers sometimes disagree about which is which.
The disagreement is significant enough that many typography experts recommend always clarifying which definition you’re using when discussing widows and orphans, or simply describing the problem directly (“single line at the top/bottom of the page”) to avoid confusion.
What remains consistent across all definitions is that both situations are considered typographically undesirable and should be avoided through careful text flow management.”
See Georges Toumayan’s “The Top 10 Typography Crimes” ListVerse.com, June 2012, accessed August 31, 2020, https://listverse.com/2012/06/24/top-10-typography-crimes/.
Why Bother?
As we notice more details of what makes a beautifully set book or magazine article, we will begin to set our own pages with those details in mind. And we begin to type out more beautiful pages, which mean pages easier to read.
With e-books, responsive design, and everyone having to typeset their own resumes, annual reports and other documents, the ideal of a good rag with no widows and no orphans seems to have gone underground. But only temporarily.
Just as good typeface options have come to the web (for more than a few years there was almost nothing much except Arial and Times New Roman). So too will we see more people paying attention to the centuries of craft and skill and knowledge of setting a good page.
Typography Animated Tutorial
Sources
- Carusone, Antonio. “8 Simple Typography Tips For Your Designs.” smashingmagazine.com, April 3, 2009. Accessed October 26, 2020. https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/8-simple-ways-to-improve-typography-in-your-designs/.
- Strizverhttp, Ilene: “Rags, Widows & Orphans. ” Fontology (n.d.) accessed August 30,2020, http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-2/text-typography/rags-widows-orphans.
- Carusone, Antonio: “Eight Simple Ways to Improve Typography in Your Designs (with CSS).“ SmashingMagazine.com, April 3, 2009, accessed August 31,2020, https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/8-simple-ways-to-improve-typography-in-your-designs/.
- Felici, James. “How to Solve Typographic Widows and Orphans.” (One of the better explanations of widows and orphans) Creative Pro.com, January 18, 2010, accessed August 31, 2020, https://creativepro.com/how-solve-typographic-widows-and-orphans/.
© Barbara Kristaponis 2014-2026. The Good Page.
The Good Page 
The trouble with using global software commands to get rid of orphans and widows is that you lose bottom balancing, which can look almost as bad.
Even when you don’t use these software commands, you can often still lose bottom balancing.
Personally I don’t see much problem with widows. It’s orphans that can murder a layout.
Yes, you are so right about the “bottom-balancing” issue. Thanks for your comment. I’m still able to proof-read everything so I can correct anything as I work on small projects, not 500 pages of something. I still not fond of widows, though I see your point. thanks for commenting.
Michelle, If you were asking permission to use an image from my site thegoodpage.net, permission granted. But consider updating the text to match your definition. They do not match.
Looking at your blog on this made me go back and note in more detail this definition disagreement among designers and I updated my own blog on this. as in some designers define orphans and widows the way you defined it, others use the definitions that would match the image you have. THe important thing is to try to avoid both regardless of what you call them.
Never knew what an “orphan” was, so thank you! Always good to understand more about the importance of how words look on a page.