How to search for runts, orphans, widows using GREP

Question

Hello,
I've been trying to bust my brains on how to do a search by locating single words at the end of a paragraph and on a single line by themselves. Yes, you guessed it! I'm trying to hunt down those orphans, widows that are sometimes called runts. I just don't want to do it manually and you always seem to miss one or two of them. I'm already using the techniques detailed and discussed in length on how to deal with orphans and widows but we have to hunt them down first...
Here's the closest GREP search I can get:
(\w+)(.)\r^
but this searches for all words at the end of a paragraph regardless of whether or not they are sitting on their own on a single line. I need to pin point on single words on a single line.
Unless of course there's a much easier way than GREP, then by all means do tell..
Using cs4.
Any input would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi Peter
I posted the following in the IndesignSecrets forum and Jongware kindly pointed me at this thread
I'm laying up a 600-odd page book for a client who went to design school some years ago where it was drilled into her that "Thou shalt never ever have an orphan" (she means runt). She is insisting that every last runt in the book be exterminated irrespective of word or line length, rivers created or insane ragging. The book contains a lot of text-wrapped anchored boxes,diagrams, etc so of course, every time there's a copy change these move creating new runts. Instead of proofing for important things like correlation of diagrams with text, etc she is fixated on these runts.
To prevent what little brain I have left from exploding I'd like to write the following Find/Change but have not been able to get the language correct:
Find: Any word preceded by a space and followed by a paragraph mark
Change: the space to a nonbreaking space
Blatner Tools lets me find the runts but they still need changing manually so I've tried your below Find/Change Grep:
Peter Spier wrote:
I don't think it's possible to find only last words alone on the line (except maybe with Blatner Tools, which I've never used). My point was that if you don't want to have a single last word you could do something like find ( )(\w+[[:punct:]])$ (there's a space between the first set of parentheses) and replace with ~S$2 and that will replace the last space in EVERY paragraph with a non-breaking space ...
Unfortunately,I can't quite get the GREP to run properly. It works for plain ordinary paragraphs but for some reason it only works randomly in bullet/numbered lists of which I unfortunately have quite a few. Also, if the last sentence of a paragraph contains a footnote marker (again many of these),  it changes the last word of the actual footnote but not the paragraph which contains the footnote marker.
Are you able to help with a tweak please.
Thanks n cheers, Gobit