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Some times the only way to get rid of a widow is, to reduce the letter spacing in a certain paragraph or footnote. Being addicted to XeLateX unfortunately I can't use the microtype package to achieve that aim, so I'm helping my self with this command:

\addfontfeature{LetterSpace=-0.1} Some text I have to shrunk unfortunately
to kill a fat, old, dirty, greedy, avaricious, mean (but rich?) old 
widow.\addfontfeature{LetterSpace=0}

But my question is: How fare can I go without risking to change the grey scale of my page? What is reasonable here?

user5950
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  • What about answers of How do I prevent widow/orphan lines? – Fran Mar 10 '15 at 03:42
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    @Fran I know the answers but some times you get widows anyway. – user5950 Mar 10 '15 at 03:51
  • I recommend developing an addiction to luatex. You won’t face this problem as often, because you can use many features of microtype with luatex, and if you do find yourself wanting or perhaps needing to play with the letter-spacing, you can load chickenize and use its \colorstretch macro to check the greyness. – Thérèse Mar 10 '15 at 04:10
  • Related question: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/166598/cutting-corners-how-to-delete-1-pt-0-3515-mm-or-so – Steven B. Segletes Mar 10 '15 at 09:57
  • Actually, my answer here, http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/231679/one-single-colored-letter-inside-spacedallcaps/231702#231702, when used with a negative argument, will also provide a remedy. Using that code, compare one single col{\textcolor{red}{o}}red letter to \def\theWordSpace{0pt} \spaceout[-.3pt]{one single col{\textcolor{red}{o}}red letter}. – Steven B. Segletes Mar 10 '15 at 10:06
  • Based on thinking about your question, I have modified my answer here, http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/230840/artificially-improving-default-tex-algo-results-for-balancing-interword-spacing/230855#230855, to use both inter-letter and inter-word spacing changes (see ADDENDUM to the answer) to achieve either a stretching or shrinking of the text. – Steven B. Segletes Mar 10 '15 at 11:31

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