# CSS: “widows”: X is not a “widows” value.

> Canonical HTML version: https://rocketvalidator.com/html-validation/css-widows-x-is-not-a-widows-value
> Attribution: Rocket Validator (https://rocketvalidator.com)
> License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

The `widows` property only accepts a positive whole number, so a keyword such as `auto` or `none` is invalid.

`widows` sets the minimum number of lines of a block that must appear at the top of the next page or column when the browser splits the block. The initial value is `2`. Apart from the global keywords (`inherit`, `initial`, `unset`), the property takes no keywords, so a declaration like `widows: auto` is dropped and the element keeps the value it would have without it.

This declaration often arrives with formatted text copied from Safari and pasted into a rich text editor. Safari reports `auto` as the computed value of both `widows` and `orphans`, and the pasted markup carries those computed styles in a long inline `style` attribute. The same elements then usually trigger the matching `orphans` error too.

Replace the keyword with a number such as `2` or `3`, or remove the declaration to keep the default. In pasted content, deleting both `widows` and `orphans` from the `style` attribute is the simplest fix. The value must be an integer of at least `1`: `0` and decimals such as `1.5` get their own validator errors.

## Invalid example

```html
<p style="widows: auto;">
  A paragraph of text that may break across pages when printed.
</p>
```

## Valid example

```html
<p style="widows: 2;">
  A paragraph of text that may break across pages when printed.
</p>
```