{"id":269613,"date":"2018-05-09T14:43:18","date_gmt":"2018-05-09T21:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/css-tricks.com\/?p=269613"},"modified":"2020-04-24T14:21:49","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T21:21:49","slug":"where-lines-break-is-complicated-heres-all-the-related-css-and-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/where-lines-break-is-complicated-heres-all-the-related-css-and-html\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Lines Break is Complicated. Here&#8217;s all the Related CSS and HTML."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Say you have a <em>really<\/em> long word within some text inside an element that isn&#8217;t wide enough to hold it. A common cause of that is a long URL finding it&#8217;s way into copy. What happens? It depends on the CSS. How that CSS is controlling the layout and what the CSS is telling the text to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>This is what a break-out text situation might be like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image align-none media-270274\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/break-out-text.png?ssl=1\" alt=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The text hanging out of the box is a visual problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One possibility is <code>overflow: hidden;<\/code> which is a bit of a blunt force weapon that will stop the text (or anything else) from hanging out. Yet, it renders the text a bit inaccessible. In some desktop browsers with a mouse, you might be able to triple-click the line to select the URL and copy it, but you can&#8217;t count on everyone knowing that or that it&#8217;s possible in all scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Overflow is the right word here as well, as that&#8217;s exactly what is happening. We have <code>overflow: auto;<\/code> at our disposal as well, which would trigger a horizontal scrollbar. Maybe suitable sometimes, but I imagine we&#8217;ll all agree that&#8217;s not generally an acceptable solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What we want is the dang long URL (or text of any kind) to break to the next line. There are options! Let&#8217;s start with a place to attempt figure this stuff out.<\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"experimental-playground\">Experimental Playground<\/h3>\n\n\n<p>My idea here is to have a resizeable panel of content combined with a variety of CSS property\/values that you can toggle on and off to see the effects on the content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"explanation\">This isn&#8217;t comprehensive or perfectly executed, I&#8217;m sure. It&#8217;s just some of the properties I&#8217;m aware of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-cp-codepen-gutenberg-embed-block cp_embed_wrapper\"><iframe id=\"cp_embed_qoLLpN\" src=\"\/\/codepen.io\/anon\/embed\/qoLLpN?height=650&amp;theme-id=1&amp;slug-hash=qoLLpN&amp;default-tab=result\" height=\"650\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allowpaymentrequest name=\"CodePen Embed qoLLpN\" title=\"CodePen Embed qoLLpN\" class=\"cp_embed_iframe\" style=\"width:100%;overflow:hidden\">CodePen Embed Fallback<\/iframe><\/div>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-sledgehammer-wordbreak-breakall\">The Sledgehammer: <code>word-break: break-all;<\/code><\/h3>\n\n\n<p>Allows words to be broken <em>anywhere<\/em>. The <a href=\"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/almanac\/properties\/w\/word-break\/\"><code>word-break<\/code><\/a> property does &#8220;solve&#8221; the issue:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image align-none media-270276\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/breakall.gif?ssl=1\" alt=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<pre rel=\"CSS\" class=\"wp-block-csstricks-code-block language-css\" data-line=\"\"><code markup=\"tt\">p {\n  word-break: break-all;\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>In an email exchange with <a href=\"http:\/\/fantasai.inkedblade.net\/\" rel=\"noopener\">fantasi<\/a>, she explained that this works because the word-break property <em>redefines what a word is<\/em>. The <code>break-all<\/code> value essentially treats non-<abbr title=\"Chinese Japanese Korean\">CJK<\/abbr> as <abbr title=\"Chinese Japanese Korean\">CJK<\/abbr>, which can break just about anywhere (except stuff like periods and close parenthesis). The <code>keep-all<\/code> value does the reverse, treating <abbr title=\"Chinese Japanese Korean\">CJK<\/abbr> as non-<abbr title=\"Chinese Japanese Korean\">CJK<\/abbr>.<\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"a-subtle-fix-overflowwrap-breakword\">A Subtle Fix: `overflow-wrap: break-word;`<\/h3>\n\n\n<p>The <code>overflow-wrap<\/code> property seems to be the most effective solution for the problems we&#8217;ve laid out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image align-none media-270454\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/break-word.gif?ssl=1\" alt=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<pre rel=\"CSS\" class=\"wp-block-csstricks-code-block language-css\" data-line=\"\"><code markup=\"tt\">p {\n  word-wrap: break-word; \/* old name *\/\n  overflow-wrap: break-word;\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>At first glance it might look very similar to the <code>word-break: break-all;<\/code> demo above, but notice how in the URL rather than breaking &#8220;pen&#8221; at &#8220;pe\\n&#8221;, it breaks at the end of that word where the slash is. Nicer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>fantasai explained:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;If a word can&#8217;t break and would therefore overflow, then it can break anywhere to avoid overflow.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"a-heavier-fix-sometimes-hyphens-auto\">A Heavier Fix, Sometimes: <code>hyphens: auto;<\/code><\/h3>\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/almanac\/properties\/h\/hyphenate\/\"><code>hyphens<\/code><\/a> property does what you might expect&#8230;allows for hyphenation in line breaks. Hyphens can sometimes do the trick in URLs and long words, but it&#8217;s not guaranteed. A long number would trip it up, for example. Plus, hyphens affect all the text, breaking words more liberally to help text hug that right edge evenly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image align-none media-270457\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/hyphens.gif?ssl=1\" alt=\"\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<pre rel=\"CSS\" class=\"wp-block-csstricks-code-block language-css\" data-line=\"\"><code markup=\"tt\">p {\n  hyphens: auto;\n}<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>fantasai told me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>If a &#8216;word&#8217; straddles the end of the line, we can hyphenate it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I guess &#8220;word&#8221; helps put a finger on the issue there. Some problematically long strings aren&#8217;t &#8220;words&#8221; so it can&#8217;t be counted on to solve all overflow issues.<\/p>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"future-sledgehammer-linebreak-anywhere\">Future Sledgehammer: <code>line-break: anywhere;<\/code><\/h3>\n\n\n<p>There is a property called <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.mozilla.org\/en-US\/docs\/Web\/CSS\/line-break\" rel=\"noopener\"><code>line-break<\/code><\/a>. It&#8217;s mostly for punctuation, apparently, but I can&#8217;t seem to see it working in any browser. fantasai tells me there will be a new value called <code>anywhere<\/code> which is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>like <code>word-break: break-all;<\/code> except it actually breaks <em>everything<\/em> like a dumb terminal client.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"other-html-stuff\">Other HTML Stuff<\/h3>\n\n\n<ul><li>The <code>&lt;br><\/code> element will break a line wherever it renders. Unless it&#8217;s <code>display: none;<\/code>!<\/li><li>The <code>&lt;wbr><\/code> element is a &#8220;word-break opportunity&#8221; meaning a long word that would normally cause an annoying overflow issue could be told that it&#8217;s ok to break at a certain point. Useful! It behaves like a zero-width space.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"other-css-stuff\">Other CSS Stuff<\/h3>\n\n\n<ul><li>The <code>&amp;shy;<\/code> character is just like the &lt;wbr> element.<\/li><li>You can inject a line break via pseudo-element like <code>::before { content: \"\\A\"; }<\/code> as long as the element isn&#8217;t inline (or if it is, it needs <code>white-space: pre;<\/code>)<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Say you have a really long word within some text inside an element that isn&#8217;t wide enough to hold it. A common cause of that is a long URL finding it&#8217;s way into copy. What happens? It depends on the CSS. How that CSS is controlling the layout and what the CSS is telling the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":270484,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"sig_custom_text":"","sig_image_type":"featured-image","sig_custom_image":0,"sig_is_disabled":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"c2c_always_allow_admin_comments":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Where lines break is complicated. Here's all the related CSS and HTML.","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[4],"tags":[1057],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/line-break.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[],"featured_media_src_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/css-tricks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/line-break.jpg?fit=1024%2C512&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269613"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":307601,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269613\/revisions\/307601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/css-tricks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}