Sets or retrieves the minimum number of lines of a paragraph that must appear at the top of a page.

Syntax

HTML	{ widows : nLines }
Scripting	[ nLines = ] object.style.widows [ = nLines ]

Possible Values

nLines

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

The property is read/write for all objects except the following, for which it is read-only: currentStyle. The property has no default value. 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 property has precedence over the orphans property.

This property requires Internet Explorer to be in IE8 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

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

See Also

orphans