How to line-break from css, without using ?

Question

How to achieve same output without <br>?

<p>hello <br> How are you </p>

output:

hello
How are you

Answer 1

You can use white-space: pre; to make elements act like <pre>, which preserves newlines. Example:

p {
  white-space: pre;
}

<p>hello 
How are you</p>

Answer 2

Impossible with the same HTML structure, you must have something to distinguish between Hello and How are you.

I suggest using spans that you will then display as blocks (just like a <div> actually).

p span {
  display: block;
}

<p><span>hello</span><span>How are you</span></p>

Answer 3

Use <br/> as normal, but hide it with display: none when you don't want it.

I would expect most people finding this question want to use css / responsive design to decide whether or not a line-break appears in a specific place. (and don't have anything personal against <br/>)

While not immediately obvious, you can actually apply display:none to a <br/> tag to hide it, which enables the use of media queries in tandem with semantic BR tags.

<div>
  The quick brown fox<br />
  jumps over the lazy dog
</div>

@media screen and (min-width: 20em) {
  br {
    display: none; /* hide the BR tag for wider screens (i.e. disable the line break) */
  }
}

This is useful in responsive design where you need to force text into two lines at an exact break.

jsfiddle example

Answer 4

There are several options for defining the handling of white spaces and line breaks. If one can put the content in e.g. a <p> tag it is pretty easy to get whatever one wants.

For preserving line breaks but not white spaces use pre-line (not pre) like in:

<style>
 p {
     white-space: pre-line; /* collapse WS, preserve LB */
   }
</style>

<p>hello
How are you</p>

If another behavior is wanted choose among one of these (WS=WhiteSpace, LB=LineBreak):

white-space: normal;   /* collapse WS, wrap as necessary, collapse LB */
white-space: nowrap;   /* collapse WS, no wrapping,       collapse LB */
white-space: pre;      /* preserve WS, no wrapping,       preserve LB */
white-space: pre-wrap; /* preserve WS, wrap as necessary, preserve LB */
white-space: inherit;  /* all as parent element */

SOURCE: W3 Schools

Answer 5

The "\a" command in CSS generates a carriage return. This is CSS, not HTML, so it shall be closer to what you want: no extra markup.

In a blockquote, the example below displays both the title and the source link and separate the two with a carriage return ("\a"):

blockquote[title][cite]:after {
  content:attr(title)"\a"attr(cite)
}

Answer 6

In the CSS use the code

p {
  white-space: pre-line;
}

With this CSS every enter inside the P tag will be a break-line at the HTML.

Answer 7

Building on what has been said before, this is a pure CSS solution that works.

<style>
  span {
    display: inline;
  }
  span:before {
    content: "\a ";
    white-space: pre;
  }
</style>
<p>
  First line of text. <span>Next line.</span>
</p>

Answer 8

To make an element have a line break afterwards, assign it:

display:block;

Non-floated elements after a block level element will appear on the next line. Many elements, such as <p> and <div> are already block level elements so you can just use those.

But while this is good to know, this really depends more on the context of your content. In your example, you would not want to use CSS to force a line break. The <br /> is appropriate because semantically the p tag is the the most appropriate for the text you are displaying. More markup just to hang CSS off it is unnecessary. Technically it's not exactly a paragraph, but there is no <greeting> tag, so use what you have. Describing your content well with HTMl is way more important - after you have that then figure out how to make it look pretty.

Answer 9

<pre> <---------------------------------------
lorem ipsum
lorem ipsum
lorem ipsum
lorem ipsum
lorem ipsum
</pre> <--------------------------------------

OR

<div style="white-space:pre">  <-----------------------------------
lorem ipsum
lorem ipsum
lorem ipsum
lorem ipsum
lorem ipsum
</div>                         <-----------------------------------

source: https://stackoverflow.com/a/36191199/2377343

Answer 10

Here's a bad solution to a bad question, but one that literally meets the brief:

p {
    width : 12ex;
}

p:before {
    content: ".";
    float: right;
    padding-left: 6ex;
    visibility: hidden;
}

Answer 11

Use overflow-wrap: break-word; like:

.yourelement{
  overflow-wrap: break-word;
}

Answer 12

Maybe someone will have the same issue as me:

I was in a element with display: flex so I had to use flex-direction: column.

Answer 13

For a List of Links

The other answers provide some good ways of adding line breaks, depending on the situation. But it should be noted that the :after selector is one of the better ways to do this for CSS control over lists of links (and similar things), for reasons noted below.

Here's an example, assuming a table of contents:

<style type="text/css">
    .toc a:after{ content: "\a"; white-space: pre; }
</style>

<span class="toc">
    <a href="#a1">Item A1</a> <a href="#a2">Item A2</a>
    <a href="#b1">Item B1</a> <a href="#b2">Item B2</a>
</span>

And here's Simon_Weaver's technique, which is simpler and more compatible. It doesn't separate style and content as much, requires more code, and there may be cases where you want to add breaks after the fact. Still a great solution though, especially for older IE.

<style type="text/css">
    .toc br{ display: none; } /* comment out for horizontal links */
</style>

<span class="toc">
    <a href="#a1">Item A1</a><br/> <a href="#a2">Item A2</a><br/>
    <a href="#b1">Item B1</a><br/> <a href="#b2">Item B2</a><br/>
</span>

Note the advantages of the above solutions:

• No matter the whitespace in the HTML, the output is the same (vs. pre)
• No extra padding is added to the elements (see NickG's display:block comments)
• You can easily switch between horizontal and vertical lists of links with some shared CSS without going into every HTML file for a style change
• No float or clear styles affecting surrounding content
• The style is separate from the content (vs. <br/>, or pre with hard-coded breaks)
• This can also work for loose links using a.toc:after and <a class="toc">
• You can add multiple breaks and even prefix/suffix text

Answer 14

Setting a br tag to display: none is helpful, but then you can end up with WordsRunTogether. I've found it more helpful to instead replace it with a space character, like so:

HTML:

<h1>
    Breaking<br />News:<br />BR<br />Considered<br />Harmful!
</h1>

CSS:

@media (min-device-width: 1281px){
    h1 br {content: ' ';}
    h1 br:after {content: ' ';}
}

Answer 15

I like very simple solutions, here is one more:

<p>hello <span>How are you</span></p>

and CSS:

p {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
}

Answer 16

How about<pre> tag?

source: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_pre.asp

Answer 17

The code can be:

<div class="text-class"><span>hello</span><span>How are you</span></div>

CSS would be:

.text-class {
  display: flex;
  justify-content: flex-start;
  flex-direction: column;
  align-items: center;
}

Answer 18

You can add a lot of padding and force text to be split to new line, for example

p {
  padding-right: 50%;
}

Worked fine for me in a situation with responsive design, where only within a certain width range it was needed for text to be split.

Answer 19

You need to declare the content within <span class="class_name"></span>. After it the line will be break.

\A means line feed character.

.class_name::after {
  content: "\A";
  white-space: pre;
}

Answer 20

Using white-space will not work for long sentences without spaces like HiHowAreYouHopeYouAreDoingGood...etc to fix this consider using word-wrap: break-word; instead

it's made to allow long words to be able to break and wrap onto the next line., its used by Facebook, Instagram and me

Example

#container {
    width: 40%;
    background-color: grey;
    overflow:hidden;
    margin:10px;
}
#container p{
   white-space: pre-line;
    background-color: green;
}
.flex{
    display: flex;
}

#wrap {
    width: 30%;
    background-color: grey;
    overflow:hidden;
    margin:10px;
}
#wrap p{
   word-wrap: break-word;
    background-color: green;
}

<h1> white-space: pre-line;</h1>
<div class='flex'>

<div id="container">
<h5>With spaces </h5>
    <p>Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1</p>
</div>

<div id="container">
  <h5>No specaes (not working )</h5>  <p>HiHowAreYouHopeYouAreDoingGoodHiHowAreYouHopeYouAreDoingGoodHiHowAreYouHopeYouAreDoingGood</p>
</div>
</div>




<h1>  word-wrap: break-word;</h1>
<div class='flex'>

<div id="wrap">
<h5>With spaces </h5>
    <p>Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1 Sample Text 1</p>
</div>

<div id="wrap">
  <h5>No specaes (working )</h5>  <p>HiHowAreYouHopeYouAreDoingGoodHiHowAreYouHopeYouAreDoingGoodHiHowAreYouHopeYouAreDoingGoodHiHowAreYouHopeYouAreDoingGood</p>
</div>
</div>

Answer 21

On CSS-tricks, Chris Coyier have tested lots of options and the final and pretty neat one was using display:table, Each one have their own problems which you will find out when you use background-color on the span!

body {
  padding: 20px;
  font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif;
}

h1 {
  font-weight: 300;
  font-size: 24px;
  line-height: 1.6;
  background: #eee;
  padding: 20px;
  margin: 5px 0 25px 0;
  text-align:center;
}
h1 span {
  color: white;
  font-weight: 900;
}

h1 span {
    background: black;
    padding: 1px 8px;
    display: table;
    margin:auto;
}

<h1 class="one">

  Break right after this
  <span>
    and before this
  </span>

</h1>

Here You can see all other options on codepen:

Injecting a Line Break

Answer 22

A modern and simple solution could be setting the width like that:

width: min-content;

This CSS rule is mostly useful for text content, but not only: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/min-content

p {
  margin: 20px;
  color: #222;
  font-family:'Century Gothic', sans-serif;
  border: 2px dotted grey;
  padding: 3px;
}

.max {
  width: max-content;
}

.min {
  width: min-content;
}

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head />
  <body>
    <p class="max"> Max width available </p>
    <p class="min"> Min width available </p>
  </body>
</html>

Answer 23

In my case, I needed an input button to have a line break before it.
I applied the following style to the button and it worked:

clear:both;

Answer 24

In case this helps someone...

You could do this:

<p>This is an <a class="on-new-line">inline link</a>?</p>

With this css:

a.on-new-line:before { 
  content: ' '; 
  font-size:0; 
  display:block;
  line-height:0;
}

Answer 25

Both Vincent Robert and Joey Adams answers are valid. If you don't want, however, change the markup, you can just insert a <br /> using javascript.

There is no way to do it in CSS without changing the markup.

Answer 26

Using   instead of spaces will prevent a break.

<span>I&nbsp;DONT&nbsp;WANT&nbsp;TO&nbsp;BREAK&nbsp;THIS&nbsp;LINE&nbsp;UP, but this text can be on any line.</span>

Answer 27

This works in Chrome:

p::after {
  content: "-";
  color: transparent;
  display: block;
}

Answer 28

I'm guessing you did not want to use a breakpoint because it will always break the line. Is that correct? If so how about adding a breakpoint <br /> in your text, then giving it a class like <br class="hidebreak"/> then using media query right above the size you want it to break to hide the <br /> so it breaks at a specific width but stays inline above that width.

HTML:

<p>
The below line breaks at 766px.
</p>

<p>
 This is the line of text<br class="hidebreak"> I want to break.
</p>

CSS:

@media (min-width: 767px) {
  br.hidebreak {display:none;}
}

https://jsfiddle.net/517Design/o71yw5vd/