Property Reference - CSS Reference - page 270

Name
white-space
Values:
normal | nowrap | pre | pre-wrap | pre-line
Initial value:
normal
Applies to:
All elements (CSS2.1); block-level elements (CSS2)
Inherited:
No
Computed value:
Same as declared value
Description:
Defines how whitespace within an element is handled during layout. normal acts as web
browsers have traditionally treated text, in that it reduces any sequence of whitespace to a
single space. pre causes whitespace to be treated as in the HTML element pre , with both
whitespace and line breaks fully preserved. nowrap prevents an element from line-breaking, as
in the “nowrap” attribute for td and th elements in HTML4. The values pre-wrap and pre-
line were added in CSS2.1; the former causes the user agent to preserve whitespace while
still automatically wrapping lines of text, and the latter honors newline characters within the
text while collapsing all other whitespace as per normal .
Examples:
td {white-space: nowrap;}
tt {white-space: pre;}