I usually do have some leeeway in editing text but my current project has content from the military so have to receive permission first.

You can prevent hyphenated runts by turning off the Hyphenate Last Word option in the Hyphenation Settings dialog box.

Use it with a character style that applies the No Break option, and youre guaranteed that the last line of each paragraph will have at least 10 characters.

Adjust the number in the brackets if you want more or fewer characters to be no breaked.

It matches just the space between the last two words in a paragraph.

Used with a No Break character style, it glues the last word in a paragraph to the final syllable of the penultimate word.

But even a small tweak can work wonders, so it might be worth seeking approval for an edit instead of spending a long time fiddling with settings and banging your head against the keyboard.

Instructor at LinkedIn Learning with courses on InDesign, Illustrator, GIMP, Inkscape, and Affinity Publisher.

Anything else can create problems.

They were committed to improving the product and willing to fight the companys dreadful bean-counters to do that.

Ive begun to doubt that ID-India has that same fighting spirit.

I suspect there are a lot of companies that have 20 or 50 seats specifically for ID and making print or PDF material.

Theyre getting ill-treated by an Adobe thats spending their money or products they have no use for.

As Judge Judy would say: Put on your listening ears, Adobe before its too late.

Those are reserved for other typographic problems.

Orphans are single first lines stranded at the bottom of a column.

And that orphans are at the bottom because they were left behind, but even today there is still little agreement.

Runt appears to be a fairly recent use, but seems to be catching on so maybe some day there will be clarity.

In Dutch we call a runt hoerejong (child of a hooker) and heshe is always standing alone.

If necessary, I edit, which I can do because I am usually the editor as well as the typesetter.

They definitely allow orphans (per Davids definition), but definitely NOT widows (Davids definition).

The publishers I work with (and their editors and proof readers) call the last line of a paragraph at the top of the page a widow, and orphans what some call runts.

And a few dont allow hyphenation across pages (which can cause loose lines).

But most follow Chicaco Manual (unless you have a rogue proof reader or the author is super-picky).

What Is Widow Orphan Control