Gets or sets the minimum number of lines of a paragraph that must appear at the bottom of a page.

Syntax

CSS	{ orphans : nLines }
Scripting	[ nLines = ] object.style.orphans [ = nLines ]

Possible Values

nLines

Variant that specifies or receives the minimum number of lines to print at the bottom of a page.

The property is read/write for all objects except the following, for which it is read-only: currentStyle. The property has a default value of 0. The Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) attribute is not inherited.

Remarks

This property applies when the document is printed. If there are fewer lines than necessary to satisfy this rule, the lines are moved to the following page. The widows attribute takes precedence over the orphans attribute.

This property requires Windows Internet Explorer to be in IE8 Standards mode rendering.

Example

The following style rule ensures that at least three lines of a paragraph appear at the bottom and top of each printed page.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />

<style type="text/css">
@media print {
    p {
        widows:3;
        orphans:3;
    }
}
</style>

Standards Information

This property is defined in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), Level 2 Revision 1 (CSS2.1).

Applies To

A, ADDRESS, B, BIG, BLOCKQUOTE, BODY, CAPTION, CENTER, CITE, CODE, COL, COLGROUP, CSSStyleDeclaration, currentStyle, DD, DFN, DIR, DIV, DL, DT, EM, FIELDSET, FORM, hn, HTML, I, KBD, LABEL, LEGEND, LI, LISTING, MARQUEE, MENU, OL, P, PRE, runtimeStyle, S, SAMP, SMALL, SPAN, STRIKE, STRONG, style, SUB, SUP, TABLE, TBODY, TD, TEXTAREA, TFOOT, TH, THEAD, TR, TT, U, UL, VAR, XMP, CSSCurrentStyleDeclaration Constructor, CSSRuleStyleDeclaration Constructor, CSSStyleDeclaration Constructor

See Also

widows