widows

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

The widows CSS property sets the minimum number of lines in a block container that must be shown at the top of a page, region, or column.

In typography, a widow is the last line of a paragraph that appears alone at the top of a page. (The paragraph is continued from a prior page.)

Syntax

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

/* Global values */
widows: inherit;
widows: initial;
widows: revert;
widows: revert-layer;
widows: unset;

Values

<integer>

The minimum number of lines that can stay by themselves at the top of a new fragment after a fragmentation break. The value must be positive.

Formal definition

Initial value2
Applies toblock container elements
Inheritedyes
Computed valueas specified
Animation typeby computed value type

Formal syntax

widows = 
  <integer [1,∞]>

Examples

Controlling column widows

HTML

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>

CSS

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

p {
  background-color: #8ca0ff;
}

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

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Fragmentation Module Level 3
# widows-orphans
CSS Multi-column Layout Module Level 1
# filling-columns

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also