Punctuation
Q. At the end of a paragraph, is a single word followed by an ellipsis considered a widow? My thought is that punctuation shouldn’t be considered, and that it would be a widow, but then the ellipsis does seem more substantial than a period or other mark . . .
A. It’s a widow only if it is the first line at the top of a printed page. As for whether it would pass elsewhere, that’s debatable. Although CMOS allows a whole word of any length in that position (please see 2.113), our actual type specifications require a minimum of four characters (not counting punctuation) in that position (see figure A.3, item 4).