Orphan

A first line stranded alone at the foot of a page or column, its paragraph beginning without it. The widow's opening-line twin.

Where the widow strands an ending, the orphan strands a beginning: one line starts a thought at the bottom of a column and the reader must carry it over the break. The paragraph arrives dismembered, and the page bottom looks accidental, which is worse than looking wrong.

The fixes are the same unglamorous trade as the widow's: nudge the break, tighten a line upstream, rewrite a sentence nobody will miss. Print holds these fights on fixed pages; on the fluid web we guard the breaks we control, cards, quotes, section openings, and let honest reflow govern the rest.