With the tspan solution, let's say you don't know in advance where to put your line breaks: you can use this nice function, that I found here: http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/7555321
That automatically does line breaks for long text svg for a given width in pixel.
function wrap(text, width) {
text.each(function() {
var text = d3.select(this),
words = text.text().split(/\s+/).reverse(),
word,
line = [],
lineNumber = 0,
lineHeight = 1.1, // ems
y = text.attr("y"),
dy = parseFloat(text.attr("dy")),
tspan = text.text(null).append("tspan").attr("x", 0).attr("y", y).attr("dy", dy + "em");
while (word = words.pop()) {
line.push(word);
tspan.text(line.join(" "));
if (tspan.node().getComputedTextLength() > width) {
line.pop();
tspan.text(line.join(" "));
line = [word];
tspan = text.append("tspan").attr("x", 0).attr("y", y).attr("dy", ++lineNumber * lineHeight + dy + "em").text(word);
}
}
});
}