hyphens

Summary

The hyphens CSS property tells the browser how to hyphenate words when line-wrapping. You can prevent hyphenation entirely, control when the browser should hyphenate, or let the browser control when to hyphenate.

Hyphenation rules are language-specific. In HTML, the language is determined by the lang attribute, and browsers will hyphenate only if this attribute is present and if an appropriate hyphenation dictionary is available. On XML, the xml:lang attribute must be used.

Syntax

hyphens: none;
hyphens: manual;
hyphens: auto;

/* Global values */
hyphens: inherit;
hyphens: initial;
hyphens: unset;

Values

none

Words are not broken at line breaks, even if characters inside the words suggest line break points. Lines will only wrap at whitespace.

manual

Words are broken for line-wrapping only where characters inside the word suggest line break opportunities. See Suggesting line break opportunities for details.

auto

The browser is free to automatically break words at appropriate hyphenation points, following whatever rules it chooses to use. Suggested line break opportunities, as covered in Suggesting line break opportunities, should be preferred over automatically selecting break points whenever possible.

Suggesting line break opportunities

There are two Unicode characters that can be used to manually specify potential line break points within text:

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.

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 use ­ to insert a soft hyphen.

Formal syntax

none | manual | auto

Example

This CSS snippet creates three classes, one for each possible configuration of the hyphens property.

<ul>
  <li><code>none</code>: no hyphen; overflow if needed
    <p lang="en" class="none">An extreme&shy;ly long English word</p>
  </li>  
  <li><code>manual</code>: hyphen only at &amp;hyphen; or &amp;shy; (if needed)
    <p lang="en" class="manual">An extreme&shy;ly long English word</p>
  </li>
  <li><code>auto</code>: hyphen where the algo is deciding (if needed)
    <p lang="en" class="auto">An extreme&shy;ly long English word</p>
  </li>
</ul>

p { 
  width: 55px;
  border: 1px solid black;
 }
p.none {
  -webkit-hyphens: none;
  -ms-hyphens: none;
  hyphens: none;
}
p.manual {
  -webkit-hyphens: manual;
  -ms-hyphens: manual;
  hyphens: manual;
}
p.auto {
  -webkit-hyphens: auto;
  -ms-hyphens: auto;
  hyphens: auto;
}

Specifications

Browser compatibility

[1] No automatic hyphenation, only -webkit-hyphens: none is supported.

[2] Automatic hyphenation only works for languages whose hyphenation dictionaries are integrated in Gecko. See the note below for a complete list of such languages.

[3] Automatic hyphenation only works for languages whose hyphenation dictionaries are integrated in Internet Explorer. See the note below for a complete list of such languages.

[4] Uses an en-US dictionary.

[5] en-GB and en-US used different dictionaries.

[6] Uses a Portuguese dictionary.

See also

• content