# \widowpenalty: the negative infinite penalty

I would like to know how do I make the MWE below work. How do I get know that

\widowpenalty

has been set to -infinite ?

Also, I would like to ask what is the orphan penalty starting with \g called in LaTeX.

\documentclass{article}
\widowpenalty=-10000

\begin{document}
\widowpenalty=-10000
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

222222222222222222222222222222222

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

\end{document}


A penalty \widowpenalty is added to the main vertical list only when TeX is contributing a multiline paragraph, between the last two lines.

If a paragraph has only one line, it can generate neither a widow nor an orphan line.

The following document will end up with two pages, because it consists of a three-line paragraph.

\documentclass{article}
\widowpenalty=-10000

\begin{document}

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa\\
222222222222222222222222222222222\\
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

\end{document}

• What is the difference between \clubpenalty and \widowpenalty ? Thank you. – user2925716 Nov 15 at 13:07
• @user2925716 \clubpenalty is inserted between the first two lines of a multiline paragraph. A two-line paragraph gets both. – egreg Nov 15 at 14:24
• (Complement to @egreg’s comment.) More precisely, in a two-line paragraph a single penalty, equal to the sum of \clubpenalty and \widowpenalty, is inserted between the lines. For example, try {\widowpenalty = -10000 \clubpenalty 5000 \par}. – GuM Nov 15 at 18:33