I have been typesetting for most of my adult life, but I just learned this recently — When a paragraph begins on the last line of the page, the isolated first sentence is called an orphan. It has no past, but it does have a future. When the paragraph’s final sentence carries onto the next page, it is called a widow. It has a past, but no future. 

I’ve always known that paper has a memory. If you fold it, the fold remains. Dog-eared books don’t forget. Each page is alive. 

I won’t be able to unsee it now, the orphans and the widows. And that makes me happy. When we know better, we do better. And if we can do this for pages in a book, certainly we can do this for each other. We must never forget to keep humanizing. When you take this away from people, take away their stories, they lose everything, and so do you. 

We all want to be seen. To be dog-eared in hearts and minds. It matters, this setting of type. It decides if we have a future.