[css] How to prevent long words from breaking my div?

Ever since switching from TABLE-layout to DIV-layout, one common problem remains:

PROBLEM: you fill your DIV with dynamic text and inevitably there is a super-long word that extends over the edge of your div column and makes your site look unprofessional.

RETRO-WHINING: This never happened with table layouts. A table cell will always nicely expand to the width of the longest word.

SEVERITY: I see this problem on even the most major sites, especially on German sites where even common words such as "speed limit" are very long ("Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung").

Does anyone have a workable solution to this?

The solution I usually use for this problem is to set 2 different css rules for IE and other browsers:

word-wrap: break-word;

woks perfect in IE, but word-wrap is not a standard CSS property. It's a Microsoft specific property and doesn't work in Firefox.

For Firefox, the best thing to do using only CSS is to set the rule

overflow: hidden;

for the element that contains the text you want to wrap. It doesn't wrap the text, but hide the part of text that go over the limit of the container. It can be a nice solution if is not essential for you to display all the text (i.e. if the text is inside an <a> tag)

Just checked IE 7, Firefox 3.6.8 Mac, Firefox 3.6.8 Windows, and Safari:

word-wrap: break-word;

works for long links inside of a div with a set width and no overflow declared in the css:

#consumeralerts_leftcol{
    float:left;
    width: 250px;
    margin-bottom:10px;
    word-wrap: break-word;
}

I don't see any incompatibility issues

After much fighting, this is what worked for me:

.pre {
    font-weight: 500;
    font-family: Courier New, monospace;
    white-space: pre-wrap;
    word-wrap: break-word;
    word-break: break-all;
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    -moz-hyphens: auto;
    hyphens: auto;
}

Works in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Opera.

Note that I excluded many of the white-space properties the others suggested -- that actually broke the pre indentation for me.

A simple function (requires underscore.js) -- based off of @porneL answer

    String.prototype.shyBreakString = function(maxLength) {
        var shystring = [];
        _.each(this.split(' '), function(word){
            shystring.push(_.chop(word, maxLength).join('­'));
        });
        return shystring.join(' ');
    };

I just found out about hyphenator from this question. That might solve the problem.

Two fixes:

1. overflow:scroll -- this makes sure your content can be seen at the cost of design (scrollbars are ugly)
2. overflow:hidden -- just cuts off any overflow. It means people can't read the content though.

If (in the SO example) you want to stop it overlapping the padding, you'd probably have to create another div, inside the padding, to hold your content.

Edit: As the other answers state, there are a variety of methods for truncating the words, be that working out the render width on the client side (never attempt to do this server-side as it will never work reliably, cross platform) through JS and inserting break-characters, or using non-standard and/or wildly incompatible CSS tags (word-wrap: break-word doesn't appear to work in Firefox).

You will always need an overflow descriptor though. If your div contains another too-wide block-type piece of content (image, table, etc), you'll need overflow to make it not destroy the layout/design.

So by all means use another method (or a combination of them) but remember to add overflow too so you cover all browsers.

Edit 2 (to address your comment below):

Start off using the CSS overflow property isn't perfect but it stops designs breaking. Apply overflow:hidden first. Remember that overflow might not break on padding so either nest divs or use a border (whatever works best for you).

This will hide overflowing content and therefore you might lose meaning. You could use a scrollbar (using overflow:auto or overflow:scroll instead of overflow:hidden) but depending on the dimensions of the div, and your design, this might not look or work great.

To fix it, we can use JS to pull things back and do some form of automated truncation. I was half-way through writing out some pseudo code for you but it gets seriously complicated about half-way through. If you need to show as much as possible, give hyphenator a look in (as mentioned below).

Just be aware that this comes at the cost of user's CPUs. It could result in pages taking a long time to load and/or resize.

CSS Cross Browser Word Wrap

.word_wrap
{
    white-space: pre-wrap; /* css-3 */
    white-space: -moz-pre-wrap; /* Mozilla, since 1999 */
    white-space: -pre-wrap; /* Opera 4-6 */
    white-space: -o-pre-wrap; /* Opera 7 */
    word-wrap: break-word; /* Internet Explorer 5.5+ */
}

After much fighting, this is what worked for me:

.pre {
    font-weight: 500;
    font-family: Courier New, monospace;
    white-space: pre-wrap;
    word-wrap: break-word;
    word-break: break-all;
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    -moz-hyphens: auto;
    hyphens: auto;
}

Works in the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Opera.

Note that I excluded many of the white-space properties the others suggested -- that actually broke the pre indentation for me.

Two fixes:

1. overflow:scroll -- this makes sure your content can be seen at the cost of design (scrollbars are ugly)
2. overflow:hidden -- just cuts off any overflow. It means people can't read the content though.

If (in the SO example) you want to stop it overlapping the padding, you'd probably have to create another div, inside the padding, to hold your content.

Edit: As the other answers state, there are a variety of methods for truncating the words, be that working out the render width on the client side (never attempt to do this server-side as it will never work reliably, cross platform) through JS and inserting break-characters, or using non-standard and/or wildly incompatible CSS tags (word-wrap: break-word doesn't appear to work in Firefox).

You will always need an overflow descriptor though. If your div contains another too-wide block-type piece of content (image, table, etc), you'll need overflow to make it not destroy the layout/design.

So by all means use another method (or a combination of them) but remember to add overflow too so you cover all browsers.

Edit 2 (to address your comment below):

Start off using the CSS overflow property isn't perfect but it stops designs breaking. Apply overflow:hidden first. Remember that overflow might not break on padding so either nest divs or use a border (whatever works best for you).

This will hide overflowing content and therefore you might lose meaning. You could use a scrollbar (using overflow:auto or overflow:scroll instead of overflow:hidden) but depending on the dimensions of the div, and your design, this might not look or work great.

To fix it, we can use JS to pull things back and do some form of automated truncation. I was half-way through writing out some pseudo code for you but it gets seriously complicated about half-way through. If you need to show as much as possible, give hyphenator a look in (as mentioned below).

Just be aware that this comes at the cost of user's CPUs. It could result in pages taking a long time to load and/or resize.

Use the style word-break:break-all;. I know it works on tables.

Two fixes:

1. overflow:scroll -- this makes sure your content can be seen at the cost of design (scrollbars are ugly)
2. overflow:hidden -- just cuts off any overflow. It means people can't read the content though.

If (in the SO example) you want to stop it overlapping the padding, you'd probably have to create another div, inside the padding, to hold your content.

Edit: As the other answers state, there are a variety of methods for truncating the words, be that working out the render width on the client side (never attempt to do this server-side as it will never work reliably, cross platform) through JS and inserting break-characters, or using non-standard and/or wildly incompatible CSS tags (word-wrap: break-word doesn't appear to work in Firefox).

You will always need an overflow descriptor though. If your div contains another too-wide block-type piece of content (image, table, etc), you'll need overflow to make it not destroy the layout/design.

So by all means use another method (or a combination of them) but remember to add overflow too so you cover all browsers.

Edit 2 (to address your comment below):

Start off using the CSS overflow property isn't perfect but it stops designs breaking. Apply overflow:hidden first. Remember that overflow might not break on padding so either nest divs or use a border (whatever works best for you).

This will hide overflowing content and therefore you might lose meaning. You could use a scrollbar (using overflow:auto or overflow:scroll instead of overflow:hidden) but depending on the dimensions of the div, and your design, this might not look or work great.

To fix it, we can use JS to pull things back and do some form of automated truncation. I was half-way through writing out some pseudo code for you but it gets seriously complicated about half-way through. If you need to show as much as possible, give hyphenator a look in (as mentioned below).

Just be aware that this comes at the cost of user's CPUs. It could result in pages taking a long time to load and/or resize.

Need to set "table-layout: fixed” for word-wrap to work

For compatibility with IE 8+ use:

-ms-word-break: break-all;
     word-break: break-all;

     /* Non standard for webkit */
     word-break: break-word;

-webkit-hyphens: auto;
   -moz-hyphens: auto;
        hyphens: auto;

See it here http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/prevent-long-urls-from-breaking-out-of-container/

All I had to do was apply this to the style of the div container with a set width.

Re the regex in this comment, it's good, but it adds the shy hyphen only between groups of 5 non-whitespace-or-hyphen chars. That allows the last group be much longer than intended, since there's no matching group after it.

For instance, this:

'abcde12345678901234'.replace(/([^\s-]{5})([^\s-]{5})/g, '$1­$2')

...results in this:

abcde­12345678901234

Here's a version using positive lookahead to avoid that problem:

.replace(/([^\s-]{5})(?=[^\s-])/g, '$1­')

...with this result:

abcde­12345­67890­1234

For compatibility with IE 8+ use:

-ms-word-break: break-all;
     word-break: break-all;

     /* Non standard for webkit */
     word-break: break-word;

-webkit-hyphens: auto;
   -moz-hyphens: auto;
        hyphens: auto;

See it here http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/prevent-long-urls-from-breaking-out-of-container/

All I had to do was apply this to the style of the div container with a set width.

HYPHENATOR is the right answer (given above). The real problem behind your question is that web browsers are still (in 2008) extremely primitive that they do not have a hyphenation-feature. Look, we are still on the early beginnings of computer usage - we have to be patient. As long as designers rule the web world we will have a hard time waiting for some real useful new features.

UPDATE: As of December, 2011, we now have another option, with the emerging support of these tags in FF and Safari:

p {
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    -moz-hyphens: auto;
    hyphens: auto;
}

I've done some basic testing and it seems to work on a recent version of Mobile Safari and Safari 5.1.1.

Compatibility table: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/hyphens#AutoCompatibilityTable

Yeah, if it is possible, setting an absolute width and setting overflow : auto works well.

I just found out about hyphenator from this question. That might solve the problem.

after all the word wraps and breaks, preserve your overflow and see if this solves your issue. simply change your div's display to: display: inline;

Do you mean that, in browsers that support it, word-wrap: break-word does not work ?

If included in the body definition of the stylesheet, it should works throughout the entire document.

If overflow is not a good solution, only a custom javascript could artificially break up long word.

Note: there is also this <wbr> Word Break tag. This gives the browser a spot where it can split the line up. Unfortunately, the <wbr> tag doesn't work in all browsers, only Firefox and Internet Explorer (and Opera with a CSS trick).

Add this to css of your div: word-wrap: break-word;

Use this

word-wrap: break-word;
overflow-wrap: break-word;
word-break: break-all;

I had to do the following because, if the properties were not declared in the correct order, it would randomly break words at the wrong place and without adding a hyphen.

    -moz-white-space: pre-wrap;
white-space: pre-wrap;        
    hyphens: auto;
    -ms-word-break: break-all;
    -ms-word-wrap: break-all;
    -webkit-word-break: break-word;
    -webkit-word-wrap: break-word;
word-break: break-word;
word-wrap: break-word;
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    -moz-hyphens: auto;
    -ms-hyphens: auto;
hyphens: auto;

Originally posted by Enigmo: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14191114

I just found out about hyphenator from this question. That might solve the problem.

Re the regex in this comment, it's good, but it adds the shy hyphen only between groups of 5 non-whitespace-or-hyphen chars. That allows the last group be much longer than intended, since there's no matching group after it.

For instance, this:

'abcde12345678901234'.replace(/([^\s-]{5})([^\s-]{5})/g, '$1­$2')

...results in this:

abcde­12345678901234

Here's a version using positive lookahead to avoid that problem:

.replace(/([^\s-]{5})(?=[^\s-])/g, '$1­')

...with this result:

abcde­12345­67890­1234

Need to set "table-layout: fixed” for word-wrap to work

Use this

word-wrap: break-word;
overflow-wrap: break-word;
word-break: break-all;

p {
    overflow-wrap: break-word;
}


@-moz-document url-prefix() { 
    p {
        white-space: -moz-pre-wrap;
        word-wrap: break-word;
    }
}

HYPHENATOR is the right answer (given above). The real problem behind your question is that web browsers are still (in 2008) extremely primitive that they do not have a hyphenation-feature. Look, we are still on the early beginnings of computer usage - we have to be patient. As long as designers rule the web world we will have a hard time waiting for some real useful new features.

UPDATE: As of December, 2011, we now have another option, with the emerging support of these tags in FF and Safari:

p {
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    -moz-hyphens: auto;
    hyphens: auto;
}

I've done some basic testing and it seems to work on a recent version of Mobile Safari and Safari 5.1.1.

Compatibility table: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/hyphens#AutoCompatibilityTable

For me on a div without fixed size and with dynamic content it worked using:

display:table;
word-break:break-all;

HYPHENATOR is the right answer (given above). The real problem behind your question is that web browsers are still (in 2008) extremely primitive that they do not have a hyphenation-feature. Look, we are still on the early beginnings of computer usage - we have to be patient. As long as designers rule the web world we will have a hard time waiting for some real useful new features.

UPDATE: As of December, 2011, we now have another option, with the emerging support of these tags in FF and Safari:

p {
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    -moz-hyphens: auto;
    hyphens: auto;
}

I've done some basic testing and it seems to work on a recent version of Mobile Safari and Safari 5.1.1.

Compatibility table: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/hyphens#AutoCompatibilityTable

after all the word wraps and breaks, preserve your overflow and see if this solves your issue. simply change your div's display to: display: inline;

Update: Handling this in CSS is wonderfully simple and low overhead, but you have no control over where breaks occur when they do. That's fine if you don't care, or your data has long alphanumeric runs without any natural breaks. We had lots of long file paths, URLs, and phone numbers, all of which have places it's significantly better to break at than others.

Our solution was to first use a regex replacement to put a zero-width space (​) after every 15 (say) characters that aren't whitespace or one of the special characters where we'd prefer breaks. We then do another replacement to put a zero-width space after those special characters.

Zero-width spaces are nice, because they aren't ever visible on screen; shy hyphens were confusing when they showed, because the data has significant hyphens. Zero-width spaces also aren't included when you copy text out of the browser.

The special break characters we're currently using are period, forward slash, backslash, comma, underscore, @, |, and hyphen. You wouldn't think you'd need do anything to encourage breaking after hyphens, but Firefox (3.6 and 4 at least) doesn't break by itself at hyphens surrounded by numbers (like phone numbers).

We also wanted to control the number of characters between artificial breaks, based on the layout space available. That meant that the regex to match long non-breaking runs needed to be dynamic. This gets called a lot, and we didn't want to be creating the same identical regexes over and over for performance reasons, so we used a simple regex cache, keyed by the regex expression and its flags.

Here's the code; you'd probably namespace the functions in a utility package:

makeWrappable = function(str, position)
{
    if (!str)
        return '';
    position = position || 15; // default to breaking after 15 chars
    // matches every requested number of chars that's not whitespace or one of the special chars defined below
    var longRunsRegex = cachedRegex('([^\\s\\.\/\\,_@\\|-]{' + position + '})(?=[^\\s\\.\/\\,_@\\|-])', 'g');
    return str
                .replace(longRunsRegex, '$1​') // put a zero-width space every requested number of chars that's not whitespace or a special char
                .replace(makeWrappable.SPECIAL_CHARS_REGEX, '$1​'); // and one after special chars we want to allow breaking after
};
makeWrappable.SPECIAL_CHARS_REGEX = /([\.\/\\,_@\|-])/g; // period, forward slash, backslash, comma, underscore, @, |, hyphen


cachedRegex = function(reString, reFlags)
{
    var key = reString + (reFlags ? ':::' + reFlags : '');
    if (!cachedRegex.cache[key])
        cachedRegex.cache[key] = new RegExp(reString, reFlags);
    return cachedRegex.cache[key];
};
cachedRegex.cache = {};

Test like this:

makeWrappable('12345678901234567890 12345678901234567890 1234567890/1234567890')

Update 2: It appears that zero-width spaces in fact are included in copied text in at least some circumstances, you just can't see them. Obviously, encouraging people to copy text with hidden characters in it is an invitation to have data like that entered into other programs or systems, even your own, where it may cause problems. For instance, if it ends up in a database, searches against it may fail, and search strings like this are likely to fail too. Using arrow keys to move through data like this requires (rightly) an extra keypress to move across the character you can't see, somewhat bizarre for users if they notice.

In a closed system, you can filter that character out on input to protect yourself, but that doesn't help other programs and systems.

All told, this technique works well, but I'm not certain what the best choice of break-causing character would be.

Update 3: Having this character end up in data is no longer a theoretical possibility, it's an observed problem. Users submit data copied off the screen, it gets saved in the db, searches break, things sort weirdly etc..

We did two things:

1. Wrote a utility to remove them from all columns of all tables in all datasources for this app.
2. Added filtering to remove it to our standard string input processor, so it's gone by the time any code sees it.

This works well, as does the technique itself, but it's a cautionary tale.

Update 4: We're using this in a context where the data fed to this may be HTML escaped. Under the right circumstances, it can insert zero-width spaces in the middle of HTML entities, with funky results.

Fix was to add ampersand to the list of characters we don't break on, like this:

var longRunsRegex = cachedRegex('([^&\\s\\.\/\\,_@\\|-]{' + position + '})(?=[^&\\s\\.\/\\,_@\\|-])', 'g');

The solution I usually use for this problem is to set 2 different css rules for IE and other browsers:

word-wrap: break-word;

woks perfect in IE, but word-wrap is not a standard CSS property. It's a Microsoft specific property and doesn't work in Firefox.

For Firefox, the best thing to do using only CSS is to set the rule

overflow: hidden;

for the element that contains the text you want to wrap. It doesn't wrap the text, but hide the part of text that go over the limit of the container. It can be a nice solution if is not essential for you to display all the text (i.e. if the text is inside an <a> tag)

Just checked IE 7, Firefox 3.6.8 Mac, Firefox 3.6.8 Windows, and Safari:

word-wrap: break-word;

works for long links inside of a div with a set width and no overflow declared in the css:

#consumeralerts_leftcol{
    float:left;
    width: 250px;
    margin-bottom:10px;
    word-wrap: break-word;
}

I don't see any incompatibility issues

Yeah, if it is possible, setting an absolute width and setting overflow : auto works well.

I've written a function that works great where it inserts ­ x letters into the word for good line breaking. All answers here did not support all browsers and devices but this works well using PHP:

/**
 * Add line-break to text x characters in
 * @param  string  $text          
 * @param  integer $characters_in 
 * @return string                 
 */
function line_break_text($text, $characters_in = 10) {

    $split = explode(' ', $text);

    if ( ! empty($split)) {

        foreach ($split as $key => $var) {

            if ( strlen($var) > $characters_in ) {

                $split[$key] = substr_replace($var, '­', $characters_in, 0);

            }

        }

    }

    return implode(' ', $split);

}

The solution I usually use for this problem is to set 2 different css rules for IE and other browsers:

word-wrap: break-word;

woks perfect in IE, but word-wrap is not a standard CSS property. It's a Microsoft specific property and doesn't work in Firefox.

For Firefox, the best thing to do using only CSS is to set the rule

overflow: hidden;

for the element that contains the text you want to wrap. It doesn't wrap the text, but hide the part of text that go over the limit of the container. It can be a nice solution if is not essential for you to display all the text (i.e. if the text is inside an <a> tag)

Add this to css of your div: word-wrap: break-word;

The solution I usually use for this problem is to set 2 different css rules for IE and other browsers:

word-wrap: break-word;

woks perfect in IE, but word-wrap is not a standard CSS property. It's a Microsoft specific property and doesn't work in Firefox.

For Firefox, the best thing to do using only CSS is to set the rule

overflow: hidden;

for the element that contains the text you want to wrap. It doesn't wrap the text, but hide the part of text that go over the limit of the container. It can be a nice solution if is not essential for you to display all the text (i.e. if the text is inside an <a> tag)

CSS Cross Browser Word Wrap

.word_wrap
{
    white-space: pre-wrap; /* css-3 */
    white-space: -moz-pre-wrap; /* Mozilla, since 1999 */
    white-space: -pre-wrap; /* Opera 4-6 */
    white-space: -o-pre-wrap; /* Opera 7 */
    word-wrap: break-word; /* Internet Explorer 5.5+ */
}

p {
    overflow-wrap: break-word;
}


@-moz-document url-prefix() { 
    p {
        white-space: -moz-pre-wrap;
        word-wrap: break-word;
    }
}

For me on a div without fixed size and with dynamic content it worked using:

display:table;
word-break:break-all;

Two fixes:

1. overflow:scroll -- this makes sure your content can be seen at the cost of design (scrollbars are ugly)
2. overflow:hidden -- just cuts off any overflow. It means people can't read the content though.

If (in the SO example) you want to stop it overlapping the padding, you'd probably have to create another div, inside the padding, to hold your content.

Edit: As the other answers state, there are a variety of methods for truncating the words, be that working out the render width on the client side (never attempt to do this server-side as it will never work reliably, cross platform) through JS and inserting break-characters, or using non-standard and/or wildly incompatible CSS tags (word-wrap: break-word doesn't appear to work in Firefox).

You will always need an overflow descriptor though. If your div contains another too-wide block-type piece of content (image, table, etc), you'll need overflow to make it not destroy the layout/design.

So by all means use another method (or a combination of them) but remember to add overflow too so you cover all browsers.

Edit 2 (to address your comment below):

Start off using the CSS overflow property isn't perfect but it stops designs breaking. Apply overflow:hidden first. Remember that overflow might not break on padding so either nest divs or use a border (whatever works best for you).

This will hide overflowing content and therefore you might lose meaning. You could use a scrollbar (using overflow:auto or overflow:scroll instead of overflow:hidden) but depending on the dimensions of the div, and your design, this might not look or work great.

To fix it, we can use JS to pull things back and do some form of automated truncation. I was half-way through writing out some pseudo code for you but it gets seriously complicated about half-way through. If you need to show as much as possible, give hyphenator a look in (as mentioned below).

Just be aware that this comes at the cost of user's CPUs. It could result in pages taking a long time to load and/or resize.

Update: Handling this in CSS is wonderfully simple and low overhead, but you have no control over where breaks occur when they do. That's fine if you don't care, or your data has long alphanumeric runs without any natural breaks. We had lots of long file paths, URLs, and phone numbers, all of which have places it's significantly better to break at than others.

Our solution was to first use a regex replacement to put a zero-width space (​) after every 15 (say) characters that aren't whitespace or one of the special characters where we'd prefer breaks. We then do another replacement to put a zero-width space after those special characters.

Zero-width spaces are nice, because they aren't ever visible on screen; shy hyphens were confusing when they showed, because the data has significant hyphens. Zero-width spaces also aren't included when you copy text out of the browser.

The special break characters we're currently using are period, forward slash, backslash, comma, underscore, @, |, and hyphen. You wouldn't think you'd need do anything to encourage breaking after hyphens, but Firefox (3.6 and 4 at least) doesn't break by itself at hyphens surrounded by numbers (like phone numbers).

We also wanted to control the number of characters between artificial breaks, based on the layout space available. That meant that the regex to match long non-breaking runs needed to be dynamic. This gets called a lot, and we didn't want to be creating the same identical regexes over and over for performance reasons, so we used a simple regex cache, keyed by the regex expression and its flags.

Here's the code; you'd probably namespace the functions in a utility package:

makeWrappable = function(str, position)
{
    if (!str)
        return '';
    position = position || 15; // default to breaking after 15 chars
    // matches every requested number of chars that's not whitespace or one of the special chars defined below
    var longRunsRegex = cachedRegex('([^\\s\\.\/\\,_@\\|-]{' + position + '})(?=[^\\s\\.\/\\,_@\\|-])', 'g');
    return str
                .replace(longRunsRegex, '$1​') // put a zero-width space every requested number of chars that's not whitespace or a special char
                .replace(makeWrappable.SPECIAL_CHARS_REGEX, '$1​'); // and one after special chars we want to allow breaking after
};
makeWrappable.SPECIAL_CHARS_REGEX = /([\.\/\\,_@\|-])/g; // period, forward slash, backslash, comma, underscore, @, |, hyphen


cachedRegex = function(reString, reFlags)
{
    var key = reString + (reFlags ? ':::' + reFlags : '');
    if (!cachedRegex.cache[key])
        cachedRegex.cache[key] = new RegExp(reString, reFlags);
    return cachedRegex.cache[key];
};
cachedRegex.cache = {};

Test like this:

makeWrappable('12345678901234567890 12345678901234567890 1234567890/1234567890')

Update 2: It appears that zero-width spaces in fact are included in copied text in at least some circumstances, you just can't see them. Obviously, encouraging people to copy text with hidden characters in it is an invitation to have data like that entered into other programs or systems, even your own, where it may cause problems. For instance, if it ends up in a database, searches against it may fail, and search strings like this are likely to fail too. Using arrow keys to move through data like this requires (rightly) an extra keypress to move across the character you can't see, somewhat bizarre for users if they notice.

In a closed system, you can filter that character out on input to protect yourself, but that doesn't help other programs and systems.

All told, this technique works well, but I'm not certain what the best choice of break-causing character would be.

Update 3: Having this character end up in data is no longer a theoretical possibility, it's an observed problem. Users submit data copied off the screen, it gets saved in the db, searches break, things sort weirdly etc..

We did two things:

1. Wrote a utility to remove them from all columns of all tables in all datasources for this app.
2. Added filtering to remove it to our standard string input processor, so it's gone by the time any code sees it.

This works well, as does the technique itself, but it's a cautionary tale.

Update 4: We're using this in a context where the data fed to this may be HTML escaped. Under the right circumstances, it can insert zero-width spaces in the middle of HTML entities, with funky results.

Fix was to add ampersand to the list of characters we don't break on, like this:

var longRunsRegex = cachedRegex('([^&\\s\\.\/\\,_@\\|-]{' + position + '})(?=[^&\\s\\.\/\\,_@\\|-])', 'g');

This is a complex issue, as we know, and not supported in any common way between browsers. Most browsers don't support this feature natively at all.

In some work done with HTML emails, where user content was being used, but script is not available (and even CSS is not supported very well) the following bit of CSS in a wrapper around your unspaced content block should at least help somewhat:

.word-break {
  /* The following styles prevent unbroken strings from breaking the layout */
  width: 300px; /* set to whatever width you need */
  overflow: auto;
  white-space: -moz-pre-wrap; /* Mozilla */
  white-space: -hp-pre-wrap; /* HP printers */
  white-space: -o-pre-wrap; /* Opera 7 */
  white-space: -pre-wrap; /* Opera 4-6 */
  white-space: pre-wrap; /* CSS 2.1 */
  white-space: pre-line; /* CSS 3 (and 2.1 as well, actually) */
  word-wrap: break-word; /* IE */
  -moz-binding: url('xbl.xml#wordwrap'); /* Firefox (using XBL) */
}

In the case of Mozilla-based browsers, the XBL file mentioned above contains:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<bindings xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/xbl" 
          xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <!--
  More information on XBL:
  http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XBL:XBL_1.0_Reference

  Example of implementing the CSS 'word-wrap' feature:
  http://blog.stchur.com/2007/02/22/emulating-css-word-wrap-for-mozillafirefox/
  -->
  <binding id="wordwrap" applyauthorstyles="false">
    <implementation>
      <constructor>
        //<![CDATA[
        var elem = this;

        doWrap();
        elem.addEventListener('overflow', doWrap, false);

        function doWrap() {
          var walker = document.createTreeWalker(elem, NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT, null, false);
          while (walker.nextNode()) {
            var node = walker.currentNode;
            node.nodeValue = node.nodeValue.split('').join(String.fromCharCode('8203'));
          }
        }
        //]]>
      </constructor>
    </implementation>
  </binding>
</bindings>

Unfortunately, Opera 8+ don't seem to like any of the above solutions, so JavaScript will have to be the solution for those browsers (like Mozilla/Firefox.) Another cross-browser solution (JavaScript) that includes the later editions of Opera would be to use Hedger Wang's script found here: http://www.hedgerwow.com/360/dhtml/css-word-break.html

Other useful links/thoughts:

Incoherent Babble » Blog Archive » Emulating CSS word-wrap for Mozilla/Firefox
http://blog.stchur.com/2007/02/22/emulating-css-word-wrap-for-mozillafirefox/

[OU] No word wrap in Opera, displays fine in IE
http://list.opera.com/pipermail/opera-users/2004-November/024467.html
http://list.opera.com/pipermail/opera-users/2004-November/024468.html

Do you mean that, in browsers that support it, word-wrap: break-word does not work ?

If included in the body definition of the stylesheet, it should works throughout the entire document.

If overflow is not a good solution, only a custom javascript could artificially break up long word.

Note: there is also this <wbr> Word Break tag. This gives the browser a spot where it can split the line up. Unfortunately, the <wbr> tag doesn't work in all browsers, only Firefox and Internet Explorer (and Opera with a CSS trick).

I've written a function that works great where it inserts ­ x letters into the word for good line breaking. All answers here did not support all browsers and devices but this works well using PHP:

/**
 * Add line-break to text x characters in
 * @param  string  $text          
 * @param  integer $characters_in 
 * @return string                 
 */
function line_break_text($text, $characters_in = 10) {

    $split = explode(' ', $text);

    if ( ! empty($split)) {

        foreach ($split as $key => $var) {

            if ( strlen($var) > $characters_in ) {

                $split[$key] = substr_replace($var, '­', $characters_in, 0);

            }

        }

    }

    return implode(' ', $split);

}

"word-wrap: break-word" works in Firefox 3.5 http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/06/word-wrap/

If you have this -

  <style type="text/css">
      .cell {
            float: left;
            width: 100px;
            border: 1px solid;
            line-height: 1em;
      }
  </style>

  <div class="cell">TopLeft</div>
  <div class="cell">TopMiddlePlusSomeOtherTextWhichMakesItToLong</div>
  <div class="cell">TopRight</div>
  <br/>
  <div class="cell">BottomLeft</div>
  <div class="cell">BottomMiddle</div>
  <div class="cell">bottomRight</div>

just switch to a vertical format with containing divs and use min-width in your CSS instead of width -

  <style type="text/css">
      .column {
            float: left;
            min-width: 100px;
      }
      .cell2 {
            border: 1px solid;
            line-height: 1em;
      }
  </style>

  <div class="column">
      <div class="cell2">TopLeft</div>
      <div class="cell2">BottomLeft</div>
  </div>
  <div class="column">
      <div class="cell2">TopMiddlePlusSomeOtherTextWhichMakesItToLong</div>
      <div class="cell2">BottomMiddle</div>
  </div>
  <div class="column">
      <div class="cell2">TopRight</div>
      <div class="cell2">bottomRight</div>
  </div>
  <br/>

Of course, if you are displaying genuine tabular data it is ok to use a real table as it is semantically correct and will inform people using screen readers that is supposed to be in a table. It is using them for general layout or image-slicing that people will lynch you for.

I had to do the following because, if the properties were not declared in the correct order, it would randomly break words at the wrong place and without adding a hyphen.

    -moz-white-space: pre-wrap;
white-space: pre-wrap;        
    hyphens: auto;
    -ms-word-break: break-all;
    -ms-word-wrap: break-all;
    -webkit-word-break: break-word;
    -webkit-word-wrap: break-word;
word-break: break-word;
word-wrap: break-word;
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    -moz-hyphens: auto;
    -ms-hyphens: auto;
hyphens: auto;

Originally posted by Enigmo: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14191114

A simple function (requires underscore.js) -- based off of @porneL answer

    String.prototype.shyBreakString = function(maxLength) {
        var shystring = [];
        _.each(this.split(' '), function(word){
            shystring.push(_.chop(word, maxLength).join('­'));
        });
        return shystring.join(' ');
    };

Do you mean that, in browsers that support it, word-wrap: break-word does not work ?

If included in the body definition of the stylesheet, it should works throughout the entire document.

If overflow is not a good solution, only a custom javascript could artificially break up long word.

Note: there is also this <wbr> Word Break tag. This gives the browser a spot where it can split the line up. Unfortunately, the <wbr> tag doesn't work in all browsers, only Firefox and Internet Explorer (and Opera with a CSS trick).

This is a complex issue, as we know, and not supported in any common way between browsers. Most browsers don't support this feature natively at all.

In some work done with HTML emails, where user content was being used, but script is not available (and even CSS is not supported very well) the following bit of CSS in a wrapper around your unspaced content block should at least help somewhat:

.word-break {
  /* The following styles prevent unbroken strings from breaking the layout */
  width: 300px; /* set to whatever width you need */
  overflow: auto;
  white-space: -moz-pre-wrap; /* Mozilla */
  white-space: -hp-pre-wrap; /* HP printers */
  white-space: -o-pre-wrap; /* Opera 7 */
  white-space: -pre-wrap; /* Opera 4-6 */
  white-space: pre-wrap; /* CSS 2.1 */
  white-space: pre-line; /* CSS 3 (and 2.1 as well, actually) */
  word-wrap: break-word; /* IE */
  -moz-binding: url('xbl.xml#wordwrap'); /* Firefox (using XBL) */
}

In the case of Mozilla-based browsers, the XBL file mentioned above contains:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<bindings xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/xbl" 
          xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <!--
  More information on XBL:
  http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XBL:XBL_1.0_Reference

  Example of implementing the CSS 'word-wrap' feature:
  http://blog.stchur.com/2007/02/22/emulating-css-word-wrap-for-mozillafirefox/
  -->
  <binding id="wordwrap" applyauthorstyles="false">
    <implementation>
      <constructor>
        //<![CDATA[
        var elem = this;

        doWrap();
        elem.addEventListener('overflow', doWrap, false);

        function doWrap() {
          var walker = document.createTreeWalker(elem, NodeFilter.SHOW_TEXT, null, false);
          while (walker.nextNode()) {
            var node = walker.currentNode;
            node.nodeValue = node.nodeValue.split('').join(String.fromCharCode('8203'));
          }
        }
        //]]>
      </constructor>
    </implementation>
  </binding>
</bindings>

Unfortunately, Opera 8+ don't seem to like any of the above solutions, so JavaScript will have to be the solution for those browsers (like Mozilla/Firefox.) Another cross-browser solution (JavaScript) that includes the later editions of Opera would be to use Hedger Wang's script found here: http://www.hedgerwow.com/360/dhtml/css-word-break.html

Other useful links/thoughts:

Incoherent Babble » Blog Archive » Emulating CSS word-wrap for Mozilla/Firefox
http://blog.stchur.com/2007/02/22/emulating-css-word-wrap-for-mozillafirefox/

[OU] No word wrap in Opera, displays fine in IE
http://list.opera.com/pipermail/opera-users/2004-November/024467.html
http://list.opera.com/pipermail/opera-users/2004-November/024468.html

If you have this -

  <style type="text/css">
      .cell {
            float: left;
            width: 100px;
            border: 1px solid;
            line-height: 1em;
      }
  </style>

  <div class="cell">TopLeft</div>
  <div class="cell">TopMiddlePlusSomeOtherTextWhichMakesItToLong</div>
  <div class="cell">TopRight</div>
  <br/>
  <div class="cell">BottomLeft</div>
  <div class="cell">BottomMiddle</div>
  <div class="cell">bottomRight</div>

just switch to a vertical format with containing divs and use min-width in your CSS instead of width -

  <style type="text/css">
      .column {
            float: left;
            min-width: 100px;
      }
      .cell2 {
            border: 1px solid;
            line-height: 1em;
      }
  </style>

  <div class="column">
      <div class="cell2">TopLeft</div>
      <div class="cell2">BottomLeft</div>
  </div>
  <div class="column">
      <div class="cell2">TopMiddlePlusSomeOtherTextWhichMakesItToLong</div>
      <div class="cell2">BottomMiddle</div>
  </div>
  <div class="column">
      <div class="cell2">TopRight</div>
      <div class="cell2">bottomRight</div>
  </div>
  <br/>

Of course, if you are displaying genuine tabular data it is ok to use a real table as it is semantically correct and will inform people using screen readers that is supposed to be in a table. It is using them for general layout or image-slicing that people will lynch you for.

HYPHENATOR is the right answer (given above). The real problem behind your question is that web browsers are still (in 2008) extremely primitive that they do not have a hyphenation-feature. Look, we are still on the early beginnings of computer usage - we have to be patient. As long as designers rule the web world we will have a hard time waiting for some real useful new features.

UPDATE: As of December, 2011, we now have another option, with the emerging support of these tags in FF and Safari:

p {
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    -moz-hyphens: auto;
    hyphens: auto;
}

I've done some basic testing and it seems to work on a recent version of Mobile Safari and Safari 5.1.1.

Compatibility table: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/CSS/hyphens#AutoCompatibilityTable