text-wrap

The text-wrap CSS property controls how text inside an element is wrapped. The different values provide:

Typographic improvements, for example more balanced line lengths across broken headings
A way to turn text wrapping off completely.

Note: The white-space-collapse and text-wrap properties can be declared together using the white-space shorthand property.

Syntax

/* Keyword values */
text-wrap: wrap;
text-wrap: nowrap;
text-wrap: balance;

/* Global values */
text-wrap: inherit;
text-wrap: initial;
text-wrap: revert;
text-wrap: revert-layer;
text-wrap: unset;

The text-wrap property is specified as a single keyword chosen from the list of values below.

Values

wrap: Text is wrapped across lines at appropriate characters (for example spaces, in languages like English that use space separators) to minimize overflow. This is the default value.
nowrap: Text does not wrap across lines. It will overflow its containing element rather than breaking onto a new line.
balance: Text is wrapped in a way that best balances the number of characters on each line, enhancing layout quality and legibility. Because counting characters and balancing them across multiple lines is computationally expensive, this value is only supported for blocks of text spanning a limited number of lines (the Chromium implementation uses four wrapped lines or less), meaning that it is useful for cases such as headings or pull quotes.

Formal definition

Initial value	wrap
Applies to	text and block containers
Inherited	yes
Computed value	specified keyword
Animation type	discrete

Formal syntax

wrap | nowrap | balance | stable | pretty

Examples

Basic text wrap value comparison

HTML

<h2 class="wrap" contenteditable="true">
  The default behavior; the text in the heading wraps "normally"
</h2>

<h2 class="nowrap" contenteditable="true">
  In this case the text in the heading doesn't wrap, and overflows the container
</h2>

<h2 class="balance" contenteditable="true">
  In this case the text in the heading is nicely balanced across lines
</h2>

CSS

.wrap {
  text-wrap: wrap;
}

.nowrap {
  text-wrap: nowrap;
}

.balance {
  text-wrap: balance;
}

h2 {
  font-size: 2rem;
  font-family: sans-serif;
}

Result

The text in the example is editable. Change the text, adding long words, to view how the different line and word lengths impact wrapping.

css properties text-wrap