Content vs. design: orphans

Subject: Content vs. design: orphans
From: Dianna Bearce <dianna -at- ellis -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2003 16:37:39 -0600


I'm the only technical writer in a small company, and my job description includes not only writing but also editing and desktop publishing.

Today I was having a rather lengthy discussion with our graphic designer about orphans. We have five software manuals (100-300 pages each) that are supposed to go to press today, but of course everyone wanted a lot of last-minute changes. The graphic designer thinks that orphans in the manual (one-word lines according to Chicago or .75" or less lines according to our designer) are serious enough to keep the manual from going to press. He thinks that we should do anything we can to get rid of them, including very tight tracking (up to -20) or rewriting the text.

Now I'd love to have manuals with no orphans in them, but as a technical writer, I have to get documents out fast. I don't have time to rewrite the text, I don't think that I should have to change the text just to accommodate the design, and I'm not willing to compromise the readability of the text by very tight tracking. I'm new to the field (just graduated from college in April) and I'd like to know what other writers out there do. Are orphans acceptable in manuals considering the tight time frame? What do your companies do? Which comes first: content or design?

Dianna Bearce


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