CSS Text Effects

CSS Text Overflow, Word Wrap, and Line Breaking Rules

In this chapter you will learn about the following properties:

• text-overflow
• word-wrap
• word-break

CSS Text Overflow

The CSS text-overflow property specifies how overflowed content that is not displayed should be signaled to the user.

It can be clipped:

This is some long text that will not fit in the box

or it can be rendered as an ellipsis (…):

This is some long text that will not fit in the box

The CSS code is as follows:

p.test1 {
    white-space: nowrap; 
    width: 200px; 
    border: 1px solid #000000;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: clip; 
}

p.test2 {
    white-space: nowrap; 
    width: 200px; 
    border: 1px solid #000000;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: ellipsis; 
}

The following example shows how you can display the overflowed content when hovering over the element:

div.test:hover {
    text-overflow: inherit;
    overflow: visible;
}

CSS Word Wrapping

The CSS word-wrap property allows long words to be able to be broken and wrap onto the next line.

If a word is too long to fit within an area, it expands outside:

This paragraph contains a very long word: thisisaveryveryveryveryveryverylongword. The long word will break and wrap to the next line.

The word-wrap property allows you to force the text to wrap – even if it means splitting it in the middle of a word:

This paragraph contains a very long word: thisisaveryveryveryveryveryverylongword. The long word will break and wrap to the next line.

The CSS code is as follows:

p {
    word-wrap: break-word;
}