white-space (CSS property)

Description

This property controls the handling of whitespace inside an element. Whitespace is a collective name for one or more occurrences of the characters space, tab, line feed, carriage return, and form feed. Typically, within an HTML element, user agents will collapse a sequence of whitespace characters into a single space character.

Note that this property only handles whitespace characters; a common beginner’s mistake is to try to use it to prevent floated elements from dropping down if there isn’t enough room on a line. If white-space nowrap is added to a floated element the whitespace characters within that float (typically the space between text) would be prevented form wrapping. It would not stop the floated elements themselves from behaving as they normally would.

Value

normal

A value of normal dictates that sequences of whitespace will collapse into a single space character. Line breaks will occur wherever necessary to fill line boxes.

nowrap

Specifying nowrap ensures that sequences of whitespace will collapse into a single space character, but line breaks will be suppressed.

pre

Specifying pre ensures that sequences of whitespace won’t collapse. Lines are only broken at new lines in the markup (or at occurrences of "\a" in generated content).

pre-line

This value will cause sequences of whitespace to collapse into a single space character. Line breaks will occur wherever necessary to fill line boxes, and at new lines in the markup (or at occurrences of "\a" in generated content). In other words, it’s like normal except that it’ll honor explicit line breaks.

pre-wrap

Specify pre-wrap to ensure that sequences of whitespace won’t collapse. Line breaks will occur wherever necessary to fill line boxes, and at new lines in the markup (or at occurrences of "\a" in generated content). In other words, it’s like pre except that it’ll wrap the text at the end of line boxes.

Compatibility

Internet Explorer for Windows versions up to and including 7 don’t support the values pre-line or pre-wrap. The values normal and pre behave like pre-wrap on textarea elements. The value nowrap behaves like pre-line on textarea elements.

Internet Explorer for Windows versions up to and including 7 don’t support the value inherit.

Firefox versions up to and including 3.0 don’t support the values pre-line and pre-wrap (although -moz-pre-wrap is similar to the latter). The values normal, nowrap, and pre behave like pre-wrap on textarea elements.

Opera 9.2 and prior versions don’t support the value pre-line. The values normal and pre behave like pre-wrap on textarea elements. The value nowrap behaves like pre-line on textarea elements.