What it means
Widows and orphans are the stray lines that a naive page break leaves behind. Under the Chicago Manual of Style's definitions, a widow is the last line of a paragraph that lands alone at the top of a page or column, and an orphan is the first line of a paragraph left alone at the bottom. (Some traditions swap the names; the fix is the same either way.) A very short last line — a single word or part of one — is a runt, and it is avoided too.
They are avoided because they break the reader's rhythm and make the page look accidental. Typesetters remove them by tightening or loosening word spacing in a nearby paragraph, running a page a line short or long (pairs of facing pages must match), or asking the author for a small rewrite.
Word processors offer a "widow/orphan control" setting; real page-layout tools and TeX give the typesetter penalties and manual control instead.
In Bindery
LaTeX — the engine under Bindery — weighs widow and orphan penalties when it breaks pages, rather than counting lines after the fact.
Make the book, not the checklist
Describe a book or upload a manuscript. Bindery writes with you, typesets in LaTeX, sizes the spine from the real page count and produces printer-validated files — the watermarked proof is always free.
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