Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Word Wrapping

Another text quality that is inherently presentational is word wrapping : the way lines break automatically in the browser window. In CSS, you can prevent lines from wrapping by setting the white-space property to nowrap. The HTML and XHTML Recommendations define no element for preventing lines from wrapping. However, there are two nonstandard elements, nobr and wbr, that were introduced by Netscape and are sometimes used to control whether and where lines wrap.

The nobr element, which stands for “no break,” prevents its contents from wrapping. The wbr (word break) element allows authors to specify the preferred point between words at which a line should break. No hyphen is introduced. These have never been adopted into an HTML Recommendation, but they are still in use and supported by Internet Explorer (all versions) and Mozilla. They are not supported in Safari and Opera.

Text and graphics that appear within the nobr element always display on one line, and are not wrapped in the browser window. If the string of characters or elements within the nobr element is very long, it continues off the browser window, and users must scroll horizontally to the right to see it. Adding a br within a nobr element text causes the line to break.

The esoteric word-break element (wbr) is used to indicate a recommended word-break point within content if the browser needs to do so. This may be useful if you have long strings of text (such as code or URLs) that may need to fit in tight spaces ...