Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

The normal value treats text normally, with consecutive spaces collapsing to one. The pre value displays multiple characters, like the pre element in (X)HTML, except that it has no effect on the font of the element (browsers tend to display pre elements in the monospace font).

Figure 18-21 shows a simple use of the white-space property as specified in this example style and markup.

    p.haiku {white-space: pre; }

    <p class="haiku">
        Love's pure silver flame
            gives each innermost spirit
      invisible warmth.
    </p>

Figure 18-21. The white-space property

nowrap prevents the text element from wrapping unless designated by a <br />. Without a <br />, the text may extend beyond the browser window, requiring horizontal scrolling.

CSS 2.1 introduced two new values for white-space. The pre-wrap value preserves multiple character spaces but allows long lines of text to wrap. Line breaks in the source are also honored. The pre-line value makes multiple character spaces collapse to one, but it preserves new lines in the source. As of this writing, no browser supports the pre-line and pre-wrap values for white-space.