jquery.deorphan.js

A jQuery plugin for eliminating typographical orphans on select text elements.

What are orphans?

An orphan is a single word that appears by itself at the end of a paragraph. This script finds the last two words of a selected element and joins them together with a non-breaking space.

For example:

For more information, check out this Wikipedia entry.

How to use it?

Include the plugin after loading jQuery. Then to activate the plugin add the following code to your own js file.

$('.your-class-name').deOrphan();

You can provide a list of elements you want deOrphan'd as well.

$('.your-class-name, .another-class-name, p, section p').deOrphan();

If you put your JavaScript in the head of your document, make sure your DOM is ready.

$().ready(function() {
	$('.your-class-name').deOrphan();
});

Known Bugs

IE6 doesn't seem to like textContent. You may want to hide this script for IE6 and lower.

Author

Steve Schrab

@megasmack

Special thanks to: @wesselej and @jschrab

License

MIT or GPL