Help:Line-break handling

This page explains different methods for creating, controlling and preventing line breaks and word wraps in Wikipedia articles and pages.

When a paragraph or line of text is too long to fit on one line, web browsers, like many other programs, automatically wrap the text to the next line. Web browsers usually insert the word wraps where there are spaces in the text.

Newlines
There are several ways to force line breaks and paragraph breaks in the text. The simplest method is by inserting newlines; for example:

&lt;br /&gt; or &lt;br&gt;
The or  tags are used for a single forced line break. For content that is semantically a list, such as in infoboxes, actual list markup is preferred. See below.

The MediaWiki software converts valid forms like, , and to. Additionally, it converts the invalid form to  as well. The invalid forms and  are not converted; therefore they will not create line breaks and must be avoided.

While valid forms without the  (such as  or ) will work properly in the rendered page, the uncommon form  can break several of the available syntax highlighters for wikicode in the editing view (mis-highlighting all text in the page after the occurrence of that tag), and so should be avoided. the rather common form  causes this incorrect display in some of them, and is thus better avoided for the time being.

Please correct invalid occurrences – such as, , or – to  as you encounter them, though preferably as a part of a more substantive edit.

&lt;poem>
The poem extension adds HTML-like tags to maintain newlines and spaces. This is useful for longer blocks of text such as poems, lyrics, mottoes, oaths and the like. These tags may be used inside other tags such as. For example:

Lists
Numbered and bulleted lists are created using standard wikimarkup. In cases where a plain list without number or bullet is desired, such as in an infobox, many editors will simply create a list using breaks. This method does not apply the semantics of a list, and for those using screen readers it will not sound like a list. For these cases, plainlist and unbulleted list both use list markup without numbers or bullets:

Preventing and controlling word wraps
There are several ways to prevent word wraps (line wraps) from occurring in unwanted places. This is an overview of when to use which method.

Non-breaking space
The HTML entity  is a non-breaking, or hard, space. It renders like a normal space " ", but prevents a line wrap from occurring, like this:

The non-breaking space works within links exactly like a regular space. Thus you can link to  directly and it will render as J. R. R. Tolkien. The initials will not be separated across a line break.

However,  renders the source text harder to read and edit. Avoid using it unless it is really necessary to avoid a line break.

Non-breaking hyphen
Browsers may break words at hyphens. A non-breaking hyphen  may be used to prevent this occurring, as in:

As seen in sections 1&amp;#8209;2 of the paper.

This code generates "sections 1&#8209;2" just like the plain code " ", but prevents a line break at the hyphen.

However, like, the use of   instead of " " renders the source text harder to read and edit. Don't use it unless it is really necessary to avoid a line break.

Inline blocks
The templates and  avoid breaks, but allow them if there is not enough space.

Both put the content in. The latter also adds the CSS class "avoidwrap".

The nowrap template is less flexible and will prevent breaks even when the line is too long for the window, forcing the user to scroll:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt. Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium.

It is good for short text sections like "10 kg (22 lb)", which should always stay together. This could also be achieved with the non-breaking space: But this makes the source text hard to read. The template is recommended instead:

(For the specific case of unit conversions, see convert.)

In some cases nowrap doesn't work so well. For instance, when you want to prevent wraps in longer or more complex text, then it might be hard to see where the nowrap ends. Additionally, the MediaWiki template mechanisms interpret characters such as equal signs " " and pipes " " in template parameters as special characters, and thus they cause problems. In these cases, it is instead recommended to use nowrap begin + nowrap end, like this:

2 + 2 = 4 and
 * 2| < 3

It may render like this:
 * 2 + 2 = 4 and
 * 2| < 3

But it will not render like this:
 * 2 + 2 = 4 and |2|
 * < 3

&lt;wbr /> and soft hyphens
is a word-break opportunity; that is, it specifies where it would be OK to add a line-break where a word is too long, or it is perceived that the browser will break a line at the wrong place.

Note that will not work inside nowrap.

In many cases breaking up a word with a space would be inappropriate. Soft hyphens create a word-break opportunity, but will add a hyphen rather than a space. The code  is employed in the same manner as  as seen in the examples above.

Use of soft hyphens should be limited to special cases, usually involving very long words or narrow spaces (such as captions in infoboxes or other tight page layouts, or column labels in narrow tables). Widespread use of soft hyphens is strongly discouraged, because it makes the wikitext very difficult to read and to edit. For example:

Wrap between (linked) list items
In lists of links such as inside infoboxes and navboxes, use the CSS class hlist (perhaps via the template flatlist) to format lists.

For occasional cases where you need to delineate two pieces of text outside of a list, you can use the templates or  which contain a   before the dot, thus handling some of the wrapping problems.