The hyphens property controls hyphenation of text in block level elements. You can prevent hyphenation from happening at all, allow it, or only allow it when certain characters are present.
Note that hyphens is language-sensitive. Its ability to find break opportunities depends on the language, defined in the lang attribute of a parent element. Not all languages are supported yet, and support depends on the specific browser.
Syntax
.element {
hyphens: none | manual | auto
}hyphens: none
Words are never hyphenated at line breaks, even if characters inside the word suggest where hyphenation could or should go.
hyphens: manual
Words are only broken at line breaks where there are characters inside the word that suggest line break opportunities. There are two characters that suggest line break opportunity:
U+2010(HYPHEN): the “hard” hyphen character indicates a visible line break opportunity. Even if the line is not actually broken at that point, the hyphen is still rendered. Literally a “-“.U+00AD(SHY): an invisible, “soft” hyphen. This character is not rendered visibly; instead, it suggests a place where the browser might choose to break the word if necessary. In HTML, you can use­to insert a soft hyphen.
hyphens: auto
Words can be broken at appropriate hyphenation points either as determined by hyphenation characters (see above) inside the word or as determined automatically by a language-appropriate hyphenation resource (if supported by the browser or provided via @hyphenation-resource).
Conditional hyphenation characters inside a word, if present, take priority over automatic resources when determining hyphenation points within the word.
hyphens: all
Deprecated, do not use. This was only in the spec temporarily for testing.
Demo
The demo below has a bunch of paragraphs and everything is set to hyphens: auto; to demonstrate the concept of hyphenation. The lang attribute is set to en on the parent element.
Browser support
This browser support data is from Caniuse, which has more detail. A number indicates that browser supports the feature at that version and up.
Desktop
| Chrome | Firefox | IE | Edge | Safari |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 88 | 6* | 10* | 12* | 5.1* |
Mobile / Tablet
| Android Chrome | Android Firefox | Android | iOS Safari |
|---|---|---|---|
| 123 | 124 | 123 | 4.2-4.3* |
Safari 5+ requires -webkit-, Firefox 6+ requires -moz-, IE 10+ requires -ms-, iOS 4.2+ requires -webkit-.
Chrome < 55 and Android browser actually support -webkit-hyphens: none, which is the default value, but none of the other values.
In Firefox and Internet Explorer, automatic hyphenation only works for some languages (defined with the lang attribute). See this note for a comprehensive list of supported languages.
If you are writing a web-based document that really need hyphenation, you can use Hyphenator.js which is a library based on a vast dictionary that will automatically inject soft hyphens and zero-width spaces into your content.
Without JavaScript, you’ll have to rely on both hyphens and word-wrap:
.hyphenate {
word-wrap: break-word;
overflow-wrap: break-word;
-webkit-hyphens: auto;
-moz-hyphens: auto;
hyphens: auto;
}More information
- hyphens in the spec
- hyphens at MDN
- Word wrapping/hyphenation using CSS by Kenneth Auchenberg
- The “current” state of hyphenation on the web by David Newton
Is there any indication when/if Chrome will support hyphens: auto?
It breaks words in the wrong place, doesn’t add hyphens and makes ‘hyphens: auto’ pretty much useless.
Personally I’d rather have ‘ugly’ justified text, or text that leaves its container than that mess.
Same happened when I tried it out. Break on false place and without a hyphen at all.
How trustworthy is “Hyphenator.js”, it looks quite good, since my site is in English and German. Had someone any experience with this?
It’s strange Chrome doesn’t support hyphens…
I just used hyphens and it works for Safari but it doesn’t for Chrome. See the word “neurotransmitter” on the table
http://www.sleepmoo.com/store.html
Since almost everyone is on Chrome, you’re saying we should use Hyphenator.js?
*One note is hyphens works when you use Chrome on mobile.
Hyphenation works in Chrome on iOS devices because it is using mobile Safari to render web pages.
Should we also add:
?
It’s not support with Khmer unicode. How can I make it support Khmer unicode?
Unfortunately, the hyphenation for each language uses dictionaries in the browser, and most languages other than English are not supported. This is because someone has to put in the effort to actually create and proofread each dictionary.
This was really helpful. Thanks!
Awesome – thanks! I’ve been trying to get rid of those hyphens so many different ways and none worked. I used your hyphenate class with attributes set to “none” and it works perfectly in firefox and IE. I like you.
Just saw a page today with odd breaks while using Chrome. So I did a search on what could going on and found this informative article.
For reference to others who come across this article, it seems Chrome still does not support hyphens :(
http://caniuse.com/#search=hyphen
I added this to my website in November 2012. I was able to justify text and it looked much better and was more readable. Then I tried it in Chrome. What a disaster. I had to turn off justification because it looks awful in Chrome.
There were also issues with the number of words browsers could hyphenate in a paragraph that typographers would not like. I’d say it’s not ready. I still use it, but I’ve turned off text justification because of Chrome.
When is Chrome going to support hyphenation? They are behind Firefox, IE, and Safari (mobile and desktop).
Shouldn’t it be -ms-word-break: break-word (instead of break-all)? For me, -ms-word-break: break-all just broke the words anywhere within the word and the -ms-hyphens:auto; had no affect.
This needs to be updated. Firefox doesn’t play well with both
hyphens: autoandword-break: break-all. I had to use@supportsrule to make the hyphen to show up on FF 3x+.Micah,
I had similar issues with Firefox but was able to solve them. You can see my question on Stackoverflow what is going on: http://stackoverflow.com/q/28976543/825757
Hi Micah, thanks for this!
Don’t work for me. For FF 3x+, i use this :
An option is to insert soft hyphens into the text in places where it may be broken
Hyphenation in web pages is unnecessary and ugly, especially considering that full justification should not be used.
In terms of responsive design it would be quite a good future to show long-spelled words even on small displays with a readable size. But as there still is a significant browser support lag, it’s not really usable so far in my opinion… unfortunately…
Try dealing with German on a 320 pixel wide (iPhone 5) display.
I did a research[1] recently and found out that using
word-break: break-all;in combination withhyphens: auto;doesn’t work as expected in Firefox as words are not hyphenated anymore. Instead, I found that you can useoverflow-wrap: break-wordwhich works great in Firefox and also on Opera Mini where word-break is not supported.[1] https://justmarkup.com/log/2015/07/31/dealing-with-long-words-in-css/
@Effeilo Thank you, that worked for me in FF 41 and FF 44.
@Micah I just tested your solution in FF 41 and it does not work.
I need to correct myself.
@Micah your solution does not work in MS Edge!
I just tested @Michael’s solution and it works in all browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge, IE9+). Thanks for sharing.
So after reading this thread and reviewing various specs, to avoid hyphenation, I came up with this:
NB: I’m using “manual” values because this most-often comes up in titles that use larger fonts. Giving editors the opportunity to insert a soft hyphen seems to make sense. The overflow ellipsis I threw in as a fallback (but it’s not tested). What do you think?
Clarification:
text-overflow: ellipsis;is intended as a fallback if the last word doesn’t fit. Obviously it won’t help upstream in the block.The article pointed by the link http://blog.kenneth.io/blog/2012/03/04/word-wrapping-hypernation-using-css/, is a French translation of MDN. Just saying.
Please star this chromium issue and comment on it if you like to use hyphens:auto crossbrowser:
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=47083
the snippet of the article should be updated, there are no reasons to declare
and using
will simply force a break at random position in a word to go to a new line, avoiding hyphenation when supported
Thanks Sara for the article. I tried to use some of your recommendations but all of them fail in one way or another.
In my opinion hyphenation is a long way far from being practical. The best approach is to justify text and pray for the best. On tables I use to hyphenate long words, otherwise on tablets and smartphones the result is a disaster. In short, unless all browser gurus agree to make standard rules all this is just a waste of time and a lot of wasted effort by idiots, like us, trying to make perfect web pages.
Yes, yes, I know they are the idiots not us.
In general, I think the
hypens: autoproperty is one to avoid.Upon upgrading to Chrome 55.0.2883.95, this property caused serious issues with tabular data on my site:
tabular data overlapping into neighboring columns,
arbitrary breaks,
and the failure for the browser to adjust the size of the column to the widest/biggest cell.
The more I think about it, the more I just don’t see much use for this property at all…
It’s just Chrome who is broken, not the others.
Go to https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=47083 and vote that feature request!
FYI, Chrome supports the hyphens property as of November 2016. https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5642121184804864
Kind of amazing that so many years later, Chrome still relies on the usage of a browser-specific prefix! I wonder what’s the hold-up.
Well, the prefix works, so I’m not complaining.
Looks like hyphenate-resources has been removed from the spec
Looks like Chrome 88 might catch up, finally! :)