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No Orphans in Titles

Have you ever seen that thing in titles where one word goes to the next
line?

Orphan It can be really
annoying.

We love good typography here at
WordPress.com.

Well we’ve adapted a version of the Widon’t from Shaun Inman and turned it on for the whole site, so now those of you, especially those with fixed width themes, never have to worry about “that thing” happening again.

WordPress.com – worrying about silly stuff like orphans in titles so you don’t have to.

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by Matt

Posted: Sunday, December 24th, 2006 at 5:21 am. Filed in Features.

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91 Comments

Comments are closed.

  1. Darmok
    Dec 24th at 5:43 am

    I love good typography too, so thank you!

  2. timethief
    Dec 24th at 5:49 am

    Yes, orphan words in titles are annoying. Thanks a lot for adapting Widon’t from Shaun Inman this feature. :)

  3. cait
    Dec 24th at 6:06 am

    this made me laugh…it’s that last line. and the creepy, creepy picture of oliver(?).

    thanks for looking out for those orphans for us. :)

  4. cmerry
    Dec 24th at 6:13 am

    Yay thank you I am really bad about that sometimes I go on and on… :P

  5. Uncle Su
    Dec 24th at 6:17 am

    I don’t understand what this is actually doing…

  6. Nicole
    Dec 24th at 6:17 am

    Nice! Thanks :-)

  7. raincoaster
    Dec 24th at 6:22 am

    Typographers and graphic designers all over the world thank you.

  8. Smaran
    Dec 24th at 6:33 am

    I think I’ll have to experience this first-hand to understand how exactly it works. Does it look for phrases?

  9. Wengistein
    Dec 24th at 6:42 am

    Harhar poor orphans. :P Though that was pretty annoying. Thanks for fixing it up. :)

  10. Daijinryuu
    Dec 24th at 6:48 am

    Sweet.

  11. storymode
    Dec 24th at 6:55 am

    I’m all about good style and typography myself. Nice addon! Thanks! ^^

  12. yuE
    Dec 24th at 6:58 am

    and now we can truly be perfectionists!

  13. girlfriday
    Dec 24th at 7:24 am

    Thanks. I like that you *fix* stuff so we don’t have to worry :) ‘Specially at Christmas ;)

  14. mustafau
    Dec 24th at 7:31 am

    Anyone who couldn’t recognize the difference may have a look at their blog at Google’s cache.

  15. بهمن
    Dec 24th at 7:52 am

    So good ;)
    I & Sorush see this problem with Thirteen theme when we RTL this them.

    Thanks.

  16. livingjourney
    Dec 24th at 7:53 am

    Ha…. thanks for that… by the way, love the photo of the orphan. More Please!

    V

  17. disembedded
    Dec 24th at 7:56 am

    Hi Matt,

    This is good. I like your attention to very helpful detail. Best holiday wishes to you1

  18. Xomps
    Dec 24th at 8:04 am

    That’s very cool ^^
    Thanx ^^

    Merry X-Mas to Everyone…

  19. madelynewyear
    Dec 24th at 8:16 am

    FIRST COMMENT! I think… anyway… thats perfect….I hate that. It’s annoying. :P

  20. Adi
    Dec 24th at 8:16 am

    :) that’s great.

  21. zaid
    Dec 24th at 8:26 am

    Way to go bro. It makes us look
    better.

  22. Khalil A.
    Dec 24th at 8:31 am

    Haha, awesome. Was always wondering why this happens though.

  23. bollig
    Dec 24th at 9:08 am

    hah, cool. thanks although i never would have known
    otherwise.

  24. fracas
    Dec 24th at 9:43 am

    Well thank you! That makes me just about as happy as a kid who just found out he gets to open some presents on Christmas Eve!

    Merry Christmas to everyone at WordPress.

  25. Keith
    Dec 24th at 9:53 am

    WordPress just keeps getting better because of the concerted and continual work and effort of its staff — great job guys and have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

  26. Galen
    Dec 24th at 10:23 am

    I wanted to say that, too, (if it is the same thing) it is amazing how many things I did not realize I could avoid just by being here. That sounds ridiculous, but it is true. My orphans were not there, if they were, so now, they will never be! Wow! Blessings are like that, we might not even “see” them. THANK YOU AGAIN, MY FRIEND(S)!!! (is this the season to get from the givers, or what???) :-D
    –g

  27. Gilles Daigneault
    Dec 24th at 10:28 am

    THX
    God I love this place!

  28. nikoxy
    Dec 24th at 11:27 am

    I like WP because it is typo-wise!

  29. ish
    Dec 24th at 11:47 am

    Nice feature.I’ve never had this happening actually but yeah,good typography is welcome anyday

    WordPress.com users-extremely happy with their administrators taking care of orphans in the titles so that we don’t have to.

  30. Rizwan
    Dec 24th at 11:58 am

    Neat feature … though I dont have worries about my title !!! lolz..

  31. rumours
    Dec 24th at 12:43 pm

    Happy Holidays WP
    :)

  32. Nicola
    Dec 24th at 1:55 pm

    Great idea – thank you

  33. Aishah
    Dec 24th at 2:19 pm

    WordPress.com – worrying about silly stuff like orphans in titles so you don’t have to.

    Lol, that’s jokes!

    Where di that come from again?

  34. H.Constantinos
    Dec 24th at 3:06 pm

    Very specific. Very good.

  35. adam
    Dec 24th at 3:16 pm

    brilliant, thank you!

  36. David W. Boles
    Dec 24th at 3:32 pm

    Excellent feature, Matt, thanks! It was always a challenge to write a headline that would break properly and then, if you changed templates, your headlines would break in really ugly ways anyway. This should solve that problem.

  37. Two Witches
    Dec 24th at 4:47 pm

    It’s so nice to know that all you programming types at WordPress are always looking to make improvements and to fix problems.

    Happy holidays
    Mama Kelly

  38. Shodan
    Dec 24th at 4:59 pm

    Yay. Happy festivus to all type lovers.

  39. The Nerd
    Dec 24th at 5:03 pm

    Please sir, can I have some more?

    Kidding ;) But good work guys. Definatly above and beyond at this time of year ;)

    Merry Christmas.

  40. madelynewyear
    Dec 24th at 5:10 pm

    Ah lol.. I did have first comment.. but my comment had to be moderated for no reason XD Oh well. :P

  41. Dave Bonta
    Dec 24th at 6:08 pm

    Bitchin’. Thanks.

  42. Michael
    Dec 24th at 6:36 pm

    Thanks, and Merry Christmas!

  43. Cubskick277 & Ompaloompa64
    Dec 24th at 8:21 pm

    that bothers me a lot too! thank god for

    wordpress

  44. businessgolf
    Dec 24th at 8:48 pm

    Thanks for watching out for us!

  45. jb
    Dec 24th at 9:53 pm

    Ok, apparently I woke up stupid today. I have no idea what Orphan Words are. Any help?

  46. Brian
    Dec 24th at 9:55 pm

    Matt,

    We are supposed to be using titles??? :P

    Have a Merry Christmas and don’t work so hard. :)

  47. suburbanbanshee
    Dec 24th at 10:43 pm

    Nice bit of Christmas kaizen.

  48. Shirley
    Dec 25th at 1:43 am

    …nor widows, either.

    Merry Christmas to all.

    Shirley Buxton
    http://www.writenow.wordpress.com

  49. Shirley
    Dec 25th at 1:45 am

    Excuse me…or widows, either :(

    Shirley

  50. David W. Boles
    Dec 25th at 2:13 am

    I just noticed this works in the Sidebar, too, for the “Recent Posts” widget — very cool — but it doesn’t work on the “Top Posts” or “Recent Comments” widgets.

  51. torchwolf
    Dec 25th at 3:24 am

    Mmm…. this seems to have prevented the:

    “My Title Had One Word
    Hanging”

    syndrome.

    But now, in the sidebar, what I often get instead, which looks even sillier is:

    “My Title Had
    One
    Word Hanging.”

    Hate to be a party-pooper, but if we can disable this in sidebars, so much the better!

  52. Nita
    Dec 25th at 3:34 am

    Thanks. Titles of my posts are often long and this is just perfect.

  53. archiearchive
    Dec 25th at 8:10 am

    Oh goody – now I can have r e a l l y l o n g titles. I like that.
    Thanks, Matt.

  54. Mr Patient
    Dec 25th at 12:58 pm

    Matt, could we also have better typography for alternate languages? For example, in French, the “:;!?»” signs must be preceeded by a non-breakable space, and “«” must be followed by a non-breakable space.

    Having WP do that automatically when French is the selected language would be a killer.

  55. Phil
    Dec 25th at 2:10 pm

    Thank You! This is a neat addition, a bit like a Christmas gift someone gives you before you realize there was a solution to one of life’s little annoyances :-D

    You really do look out for us, WordPress – A Merry christmas to you all~!

    Phil —

  56. Tina
    Dec 25th at 2:53 pm

    Wow, you guys thought of that?

    But it really is annoying when it goes to the next line.

    This just made me realize that I’m into good typography too.

  57. tobeme
    Dec 25th at 4:44 pm

    Nice holiday gift for us!

  58. Robert
    Dec 25th at 5:06 pm

    Thank you for fixing such an annoying problem!

  59. Coconuts
    Dec 25th at 10:49 pm

    This will undoubtedly improve the general quality of life for all wordpress.com users/readers, and for that I thank you.

  60. doublecheese
    Dec 25th at 11:38 pm

    Cool but man it seemed weir when on my dashboard I saw the title as “No orphans in titles”. I thought, “Does this mean we can’t have blog titles with “orphan” in them?”

  61. metaphorical
    Dec 26th at 5:35 am

    Very cool. Surely hung punctuation is next?

  62. Admin
    Dec 26th at 9:15 am

    Very nice, this should be applied to sidebar as well.

  63. deveels
    Dec 26th at 11:14 am

    It’s just amazing how you pay attention even to the smallest things. Thanks.

  64. aikidude
    Dec 26th at 2:05 pm

    i had no idea what you were talking about (not being a journalist or… english mother tongue!!)

    good learning new things every day.. thanks wordpress!

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  66. S. Weasel
    Dec 26th at 10:07 pm

    But what does it do instead? Shrink the font? Bounce another word to the second line to keep the orphan company?

    I just scrolled through my everything without finding a headline that long.

  67. gspence1173
    Dec 27th at 12:09 am

    thanks!

  68. CottonWood
    Dec 27th at 11:52 am

    Widon’t is really useful. thanks a lot

  69. blaze
    Dec 27th at 2:01 pm

    I don’t know what you’re

    talking about.

  70. hools
    Dec 27th at 2:34 pm

    Now where is the option to smack people for poor grammar? Will that be built in? Hope so! ;)
    On an unrelated note (honest!):

    You meant “fixed width” right?

  71. lostalien
    Dec 27th at 3:22 pm

    Thank you! In the spirit of Christmas and the Season, we try to look after all orphans… :)

  72. maique
    Dec 27th at 4:13 pm

    thanks.

  73. Free Willy
    Dec 27th at 7:17 pm

    Good! :D Thanks!

  74. phoenixashes88
    Dec 27th at 7:24 pm

    Oh, I hate it when that happens! Thank you!

  75. lisawarninger
    Dec 28th at 2:59 am

    Wow, I love wordpress. Thanks guys.

  76. hillary
    Dec 28th at 4:55 am

    much appreciated..

  77. Jacqui
    Dec 28th at 4:57 am

    Aw. Those poor orphans. *grieves*

  78. bkbloodaxe
    Dec 28th at 10:53 am

    Makes me want to get up there and leave some real untidy text hanging around. But, if it makes your holiday season more of a relaxing one …

  79. JLB
    Dec 28th at 12:33 pm

    Hooray! Thank you WordPress, and Happy Holidays!!!

  80. Milla
    Dec 28th at 7:34 pm

    U R a star! Thnks!

  81. Layla Gonzalez
    Dec 28th at 9:07 pm

    LOL! Thanks for worrying about orphans so we don’t have to. I appreciate it! :)

  82. Aristocrat
    Dec 29th at 12:48 pm

    Nice!! I don’t think I realized that this problem ever occurred to me before since I tend to use one-word headlines but props for the nice thought!

  83. Helton
    Dec 29th at 4:42 pm

    thank you I am really bad about that sometimes I go on . . .

  84. galvanized
    Dec 31st at 7:45 pm

    Bahaha thanks for making that piece of webpage/word processing information interesting. (Love the pic!)

  85. Meredith
    Dec 31st at 9:39 pm

    Thanks for solving the troublesome orphans and widows.
    Can Widon’t be applied to body copy and paragraph text too?

  86. arationalaversion
    Jan 2nd at 1:31 am

    Question: How do I get this little widget? Neither the comments above (on scanning, not reading) nor the brief article say how to get the Word version of this other guy’s product…or am I just being, like, illiterate?

  87. Matt
    Jan 2nd at 5:01 am

    arationalaversion, it’s already on your WP.com blog, it’s all automatic.

  88. BairbS
    Jan 3rd at 2:30 am

    That’s
    great,
    Matt.
    Thanks!

  89. Dmitri Marine
    Jan 5th at 6:52 am

    hah neat. good typography, yay. i actually hadn’t even realised, just reading about this b/c of the december summary post.

  90. candyslice
    Jan 12th at 7:14 pm

    But what about the ORPHANS! Um, sorry. Thanks.

  91. symbologie
    Jun 28th at 2:14 am

    Clean typography = love.

    I’m happy here already! *waves newbie flag*

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