Widows and orphans
Stranded lines of text: an orphan is left alone at the bottom of a column, a widow alone at the top of the next one.
See it
What it is
Both names describe a line that got stranded. An orphan is the first line of a paragraph left behind alone at the bottom of a column or page. A widow is the last line of a paragraph pushed alone to the top of the next one. The single stranded word everyone complains about in headlines is strictly a runt, but nobody will correct you for calling it a widow.
On the web it bites hardest in short text: hero headlines, card titles, buttons, pull quotes. The fixes, roughly in order of how much you should trust them: 'text-wrap: balance' on headings, 'text-wrap: pretty' on body copy, a non-breaking space between the final two words, and only as a last resort a hand-placed line break. For real paginated output (print stylesheets, multi-column) the CSS 'widows' and 'orphans' properties actually apply.
Gotcha: the mnemonic. An orphan is alone at the start, a widow is alone at the end, and half the industry swaps them anyway. The other trap is 'text-wrap: balance', which browsers cap at a handful of lines (about six) for performance, so it silently does nothing to a real paragraph.
Ask AI for it
Fix stranded lines across this page. Apply 'text-wrap: balance' to short headings and card titles so their lines come out roughly even. Apply 'text-wrap: pretty' to body paragraphs as progressive enhancement: it is a browser heuristic that improves the odds, not a guarantee that no paragraph ends on one word, so do not describe it as one. For the hero headline and any other critical short headline, bind the final two words with a non-breaking space, which is the only rule here that actually holds. Add 'widows: 2; orphans: 2' to the print and paginated styles, where those properties genuinely apply. Do not insert hard line breaks anywhere.