Word Wrap - Word Boundaries, Hyphenation, and Hard Spaces

Word Boundaries, Hyphenation, and Hard Spaces

The soft returns are usually placed after the ends of complete words, or after the punctuation that follows complete words. However, word wrap may also occur following a hyphen inside of a word. This is sometimes not desired, and can be blocked by using a non-breaking hyphen, or hard hyphen, instead of a regular hyphen.

A word without hyphens can be made wrappable by having soft hyphens in it. When the word isn't wrapped (i.e., isn't broken across lines), the soft hyphen isn't visible. But if the word is wrapped across lines, this is done at the soft hyphen, at which point it is shown as a visible hyphen on the top line where the word is broken. (In the rare case of a word that is meant to be wrappable by breaking it across lines but without making a hyphen ever appear, a zero-width space is put at the permitted breaking point(s) in the word.)

Sometimes word wrap is undesirable between adjacent words. In such cases, word wrap can usually be blocked by using a hard space or non-breaking space between the words, instead of regular spaces.