Number separated from the rest of the sentence

Question

I don't know how this is called and so I can't find information about it, and don't want to post a repeated questions.

I have sentences which end in "weight 1" or "line 2". And latex separates the number from the word. I was looking for a way to correct this automatically (and not by adding ~). I searched for orphan, single number, number next line... but didn't find this problem handled.

Does anyone know how I can search this issue?

Answer 1

1. If you can't find a question that would be the same as what you ask, simply go ahead and ask a question on the main site.

2. What you want is impossible, but not because TeX wouldn't be capable of such things (well, LuaTeX shall be able to solve this), but because it cannot know whether the number is after the word like in your examples, or before the word like in: "The article is 5~pages long."

Answer 2

As a typographical side note, the following mnemonic describes the difference between an orphan and a widow:

"An orphan starts alone, a widow ends alone."

• An orphan refers to a single word or line left at the bottom of a page, with the remainder of the paragraph appearing in the next column or following page;
• A widow refers to a single word or line that is forced to be separated from a paragraph that overflows into the next column or onto the following page;

(La)TeX refers to an orphan as being a "club" and provides an associated penalty for that - \clubpenalty.

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There is no specific search that covers this type of query, unless it's tagged that way, since Stack Exchange's search capability provides no discernment between letters and numbers - they're both characters.

Your request seems to be more general that having a possible widow, as you want to join end-of-sentence numerals with the preceding word. My guess is that this would require a LuaLaTeX approach as a solution.

Alternatively, get in the habit of following Mr. Drofnats.