Widows, Orphans, and Runts

In redesigning this site I wanted to prevent widows in headlines, ensuring that individual overflowing words don’t wrap onto a new line. Fortunately modern CSS has a way to indicate that you want the browser to trade a bit more time for improved text layout: text-wrap: pretty. From MDN:

text-wrap: pretty results in the same behavior as wrap, except that the user agent will use a slower algorithm that favors better layout over speed. This is intended for body copy where good typography is favored over performance (for example, when the number of orphans should be kept to a minimum).

Amusingly the Wikipedia page for widows and orphans states that, at least when it comes to typography, all three of these terms are used somewhat interchangeably:

• Widow (sometimes called orphan)
• Orphan (sometimes called widow)
• Runt (sometimes called widow or orphan)

As of late 2026 Can I Use reports around 75% of global browser support for text-wrap: pretty, with the bulk of the holdouts being versions of iOS before iOS 26.