Text behavior within containers is fundamental for well-structured interfaces. Tailwind provides utilities for controlling text wrapping and truncation.

Controlling Text Wrapping

Tailwind offers utilities for controlling how text flows and breaks across lines.

Word Breaks (word-break)

The word-break property controls how words break to prevent overflow.

• break-normal: Default behavior, breaks only at normal word break points
• break-all: Breaks anywhere necessary, even within words
• break-keep: Prevents breaks in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean (CJK) text. For non-CJK text, behaves like break-normal

Apply conditionally with breakpoints:

<p class="break-all md:break-normal">Thisisasuperlongwordthatwillbreakanywherenecessary.</p>

Overflow Wrapping (overflow-wrap)

The overflow-wrap property specifies whether browsers should break lines within words to prevent overflow.

• wrap-normal: Default behavior, breaks only at natural wrapping points like spaces and hyphens
• wrap-break-word: Allows line breaks between letters if needed to prevent overflow
• wrap-anywhere: Similar to wrap-break-word but factors mid-word breaks when calculating intrinsic size. Useful for flex containers where you’d otherwise need min-width: 0

<div class="flex w-32">
  <p class="wrap-anywhere">Anotherlongwordtobreakanywhere.</p>
</div>

Whitespace Control (white-space)

The white-space property controls how whitespace and line breaks are handled.

• whitespace-normal: Text wraps normally, newlines and spaces are collapsed
• whitespace-nowrap: Prevents wrapping, text overflows if necessary. Newlines and spaces are collapsed
• whitespace-pre: Preserves newlines and spaces exactly as written. Text doesn’t wrap
• whitespace-pre-line: Preserves newlines but collapses spaces. Text wraps normally
• whitespace-pre-wrap: Preserves newlines and spaces. Text wraps normally
• whitespace-break-spaces: Preserves newlines and spaces, including at line ends

<p class="overflow-hidden text-ellipsis whitespace-nowrap">
  This text will not wrap and will be truncated with an ellipsis if it overflows.
</p>
<p class="whitespace-pre-wrap">This text preserves newlines and spaces, and wraps normally.</p>

Controlling Breaks in Columns and Pages

Control where content breaks in multi-column layouts or print styles.

Break After (break-after)

Controls column or page breaks after an element.

Available utilities: break-after-auto, break-after-avoid, break-after-all, break-after-avoid-page, break-after-page, break-after-left, break-after-right, break-after-column.

<div class="columns-2">
  <p>Content before break...</p>
  <div class="break-after-column"></div>
  <p>Content after break...</p>
</div>

Break Before (break-before)

Controls column or page breaks before an element.

Available utilities: break-before-auto, break-before-avoid, break-before-all, break-before-avoid-page, break-before-page, break-before-left, break-before-right, break-before-column.

<div class="columns-2">
  <p>Content before break...</p>
  <p class="break-before-column">Content after break...</p>
</div>

Break Inside (break-inside)

Controls column or page breaks within an element.

Available utilities: break-inside-auto, break-inside-avoid, break-inside-avoid-page, break-inside-avoid-column.

<div class="columns-2">
  <div class="break-inside-avoid">
    <p>This block of text should ideally not be broken across columns or pages.</p>
  </div>
</div>

Hyphenation (hyphens)

The hyphens property controls whether words should be hyphenated when text wraps.

• hyphens-none: Prevents hyphenation, even with line break suggestions (­)
• hyphens-manual: Only hyphenates at specified break points (­). Browser default
• hyphens-auto: Allows browser to automatically choose hyphenation points based on language. Manual suggestions are preferred

<p class="hyphens-auto">This word-processing example demonstrates automatic hyphenation.</p>

General Text Wrapping (text-wrap)

The text-wrap property offers modern control over text wrapping.

• text-wrap: Allows text to wrap normally at logical points
• text-nowrap: Prevents text from wrapping
• text-balance: Distributes text evenly across lines. Browsers often limit this to ~6 lines for performance, making it ideal for headings
• text-pretty: Attempts to prevent orphans (single words on the last line)

<h1 class="text-balance">A title that looks good across multiple lines.</h1>
<p class="text-pretty">
  A longer paragraph that avoids having a single word orphaned on the last line.
</p>

Managing Text Truncation

Constrain text to specific spaces and indicate when content is cut off.

Single-line Truncation (text-overflow)

Prevent text from wrapping and indicate overflow.

• truncate: Composite utility that sets overflow: hidden, text-overflow: ellipsis, and white-space: nowrap. Prevents wrapping and truncates with ellipsis (…)

  <p class="w-32 truncate">This text is too long and will be truncated.</p>

• text-ellipsis: Sets text-overflow: ellipsis. Use with overflow: hidden and white-space: nowrap to add ellipsis (…) to overflowing text
• text-clip: Sets text-overflow: clip. Truncates text at content area limit without indicator. Browser default

Multi-line Clamping (line-clamp)

Truncate multi-line text after a specific number of lines.

• line-clamp-<number>: Limits text to specified lines (line-clamp-2, line-clamp-3). Sets overflow: hidden, display: -webkit-box, -webkit-box-orient: vertical, and -webkit-line-clamp: <number>

  <div class="w-48">
    <p class="line-clamp-3">
      This is a longer block of text that will be limited to a maximum of three lines before being
      truncated with an ellipsis.
    </p>
  </div>

• line-clamp-none: Removes previously applied line clamp
• Custom Values: Use line-clamp-[<value>] for custom line counts

Apply responsively:

<p class="line-clamp-2 md:line-clamp-4">
  This text will show 2 lines on small screens and 4 on medium screens and up.
</p>
<p class="line-clamp-[5] lg:line-clamp-[8]">This text uses arbitrary line counts.</p>

Tailwind’s text wrapping and truncation utilities provide comprehensive control over text flow directly in HTML, making it easy to manage complex layouts and handle overflow scenarios consistently.