white-space

Baseline Widely available *

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

* Some parts of this feature may have varying levels of support.

The white-space CSS property sets how white space inside an element is handled.

Try it

white-space: normal;

white-space: pre;

white-space: pre-wrap;

white-space: pre-line;

white-space: wrap;

white-space: collapse;

white-space: preserve nowrap;

<section class="default-example" id="default-example">
  <div id="example-element">
    <p>
      But ere she from the church-door stepped She smiled and told us why: 'It
      was a wicked woman's curse,' Quoth she, 'and what care I?' She smiled, and
      smiled, and passed it off Ere from the door she stept—
    </p>
  </div>
</section>

#example-element {
  width: 16rem;
}

#example-element p {
  border: 1px solid #c5c5c5;
  padding: 0.75rem;
  text-align: left;
}

The property specifies two things:

Whether and how white space is collapsed.
Whether and how lines wrap.

Note: To make words break within themselves, use overflow-wrap, word-break, or hyphens instead.

Constituent properties

This property is a shorthand for the following CSS properties:

Note: The spec defines a third constituent property: white-space-trim, which is not implemented in any browser yet.

Syntax

css

/* Single keyword values */
white-space: normal;
white-space: pre;
white-space: pre-wrap;
white-space: pre-line;

/* white-space-collapse and text-wrap-mode shorthand values */
white-space: nowrap;
white-space: wrap;
white-space: break-spaces;
white-space: collapse;
white-space: preserve nowrap;

/* Global values */
white-space: inherit;
white-space: initial;
white-space: revert;
white-space: revert-layer;
white-space: unset;

Values

The white-space property values can be specified as one or two keywords representing the values for the white-space-collapse and text-wrap-mode properties, or the following special keywords:

normal: Sequences of white space are collapsed. Newline characters in the source are handled the same as other white spaces. Lines are broken as necessary to fill line boxes. Equivalent to collapse wrap.
pre: Sequences of white space are preserved. Lines are only broken at newline characters in the source and at <br> elements. Equivalent to preserve nowrap.
pre-wrap: Sequences of white space are preserved. Lines are broken at newline characters, at <br>, and as necessary to fill line boxes. Equivalent to preserve wrap.
pre-line: Sequences of white space are collapsed. Lines are broken at newline characters, at <br>, and as necessary to fill line boxes. Equivalent to preserve-breaks wrap.

Note: The white-space property as a shorthand is a relatively new feature (see browser compatibility). Originally, it had six keyword values; now, the value nowrap is instead interpreted as a value for text-wrap-mode, while the value break-spaces is interpreted as a value for white-space-collapse. The above four keywords are still specific to white-space, but they have longhand equivalents. The change to make white-space a shorthand expands acceptable values to even more keywords and combinations, such as wrap and collapse.

The following table summarizes the behavior of these four white-space keyword values:

	New lines	Spaces and tabs	Text wrapping	End-of-line spaces	End-of-line other space separators
`normal`	Collapse	Collapse	Wrap	Remove	Hang
`pre`	Preserve	Preserve	No wrap	Preserve	No wrap
`pre-wrap`	Preserve	Preserve	Wrap	Hang	Hang
`pre-line`	Preserve	Collapse	Wrap	Remove	Hang

A tab defaults to 8 spaces and can be configured using the tab-size property. In the case of normal, nowrap, and pre-line values, every tab is converted to a space (U+0020) character.

Note: There is a distinction made between spaces and other space separators. These are defined as follows:

spaces: Spaces (U+0020), tabs (U+0009), and segment breaks (such as newlines).
other space separators: All other space separators defined in Unicode, other than those already defined as spaces.

Where white space is said to hang, this can affect the size of the box when measured for intrinsic sizing.

Collapsing of white space

The white-space-collapse property page explains the browser algorithm for collapsing white space.

Formal definition

Initial value	`normal`
Applies to	all elements
Inherited	yes
Computed value	as specified
Animation type	discrete

Formal syntax

white-space = 
  normal        |
  pre           |
  nowrap        |
  pre-wrap      |
  break-spaces  |
  pre-line

Examples

Basic example

css

code {
  white-space: pre;
}

Line breaks inside <pre> elements

css

pre {
  white-space: pre-wrap;
}

In action

<div id="css-code" class="box">
  p { white-space:
  <select>
    <option>normal</option>
    <option>nowrap</option>
    <option>pre</option>
    <option>pre-wrap</option>
    <option>pre-line</option>
    <option>break-spaces</option>
  </select>
  }
</div>
<div id="results" class="box">
  <p>
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod
    tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam,
    quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo
    consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse
    cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat
    non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
  </p>
</div>

.box {
  width: 350px;
  padding: 16px;
}

#css-code {
  background-color: rgb(220 220 220);
  font-size: 16px;
  font-family: monospace;
}

#css-code select {
  font-family: inherit;
  width: 100px;
}

#results {
  background-color: rgb(230 230 230);
  overflow-x: scroll;
  white-space: normal;
  font-size: 14px;
}

const select = document.querySelector("#css-code select");
const results = document.querySelector("#results p");
select.addEventListener("change", (e) => {
  results.style.setProperty("white-space", e.target.value);
});

Controlling line wrapping in tables

HTML

html

<table>
  <tr>
    <td></td>
    <td>Very long content that splits</td>
    <td class="nw">Very long content that don't split</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td class="nw">white-space:</td>
    <td>normal</td>
    <td>nowrap</td>
  </tr>
</table>

CSS

css

table {
  border-collapse: collapse;
  border: solid black 1px;
  width: 250px;
  height: 150px;
}
td {
  border: solid 1px black;
  text-align: center;
}
.nw {
  white-space: nowrap;
}

Result

Multiple lines in SVG text element

The white-space CSS property can be used to create multiple lines in a <text> element, which does not wrap by default.

HTML

The text inside the <text> element needs to be split into multiple lines for the new lines to be detected. After the first line the rest need to have their whitespace removed.

html

<svg viewBox="0 0 320 150">
  <text y="20" x="10">Here is an English paragraph
that is broken into multiple lines
in the source code so that it can
be more easily read and edited
in a text editor.
  </text>
</svg>

CSS

css

text {
  white-space: break-spaces;
}

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Text Module Level 4 # white-space-property
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 2 # TextWhiteSpace

white-space

Try it

Constituent properties

Syntax

Values

Collapsing of white space

Formal definition

Formal syntax

Examples

Basic example

Line breaks inside <pre> elements

In action

Controlling line wrapping in tables

HTML

CSS

Result

Multiple lines in SVG text element

HTML

CSS

Result

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also