CSS Basic: word-break

In web development, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) plays a crucial role in controlling the layout and appearance of web pages. One important CSS property that web developers often use is word-break. This property allows you to control how words should break and wrap when they exceed the width of their container.

Understanding the word-break property

The word-break property specifies how words should be broken and wrapped when they exceed the width of their container. It has several possible values:

• normal: This is the default value. Words break only at allowed break points, such as hyphens or spaces.
• break-all: Words can be broken at any character, even if it is in the middle of a word. This can result in uneven word spacing.
• keep-all: Words are not broken at all, even if they exceed the width of their container. This is useful for languages that do not use spaces between words, such as Chinese or Japanese.

Let’s take a look at some examples to better understand how the word-break property works.

Examples

Consider the following HTML and CSS code:

<div class="container">
  <p class="text">This is a longwordthatcannotbebroken.</p>
</div>


.container {
  width: 200px;
  border: 1px solid black;
}

.text {
  word-break: break-all;
}

In this example, the word “longwordthatcannotbebroken” exceeds the width of its container. By applying the word-break: break-all; property to the .text class, the word is broken at any character, resulting in uneven word spacing:

Now, let’s modify the CSS code to use the word-break: keep-all; property:

.text {
  word-break: keep-all;
}

With this change, the word is not broken at all, even though it exceeds the width of its container:

Conclusion

The word-break property in CSS allows web developers to control how words should break and wrap when they exceed the width of their container. By using values like break-all or keep-all, you can achieve the desired word wrapping behavior for different languages or design requirements.

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