CSS white-space Property Explained

When we add content to a specific HTML document, sometimes we add some unstructured content (eg: extra white spaces, breaks) that can't be displayed correctly in the browser.

As we see from the previous image that the browser by default doesn't render these extra spaces and breaks. However, if we want to handle that manually we can use the CSS property white-space which helps us to control the white spaces processing.

Following the possible combinations that can be used as a value of white-space:

normal

h1 {
  white-space: normal;
}

Render line break characters as a white space, excluding the <br> tag which will be rendered normally as single line break, then all the extra whitespaces will collapses into one space.

pre

h1 {
  white-space: pre;
}

Line breaks characters render normally, text will not be wrapped, plus the extra white spaces will be preserved.

nowrap

h1 {
  white-space: nowrap;
}

Behaves like normal value where it preserve the text to collapse, the text will not be wrapped except if we use a tag like the single line break <br>.

pre-wrap

h1 {
  white-space: pre-wrap;
}

Preserve the white space, and allows text wrapping.

pre-line

h1 {
  white-space: pre-line;
}

Extra white spaces are collapsed (form a single white space), line break preserved, and allows text wrapping.