About the Word Wrap Tool
Plain text files, emails, commit messages and code comments are easier to read when their lines are not too long. This word wrap tool breaks long lines at the width you choose, normally at a space so that words stay whole, and keeps blank lines and indentation as they are. A word that is longer than a whole line can be broken, or left alone if you prefer. The same tool works in reverse: it joins lines that were wrapped by hand back into full paragraphs, which helps when you copy text from a narrow email or a hard-wrapped document and want it to flow again.
Updated October 2026
How to use the Word Wrap Tool
- 1Paste your text into the left box.
- 2Choose Wrap long lines or Join wrapped lines into paragraphs.
- 3Set the maximum line length, such as 72 for email or 80 for code.
- 4Decide whether very long words may be broken.
- 5Copy the wrapped text or download it.
Example
Take the sentence the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog and wrap it at 15 characters. You get three lines: the quick brown, fox jumps over, and the lazy dog. No word is split, and each line is at most 15 characters long. If you then use Join wrapped lines, the three lines flow back into one.
Remember that the width counts characters, not pixels. A line of 80 narrow letters is shorter on screen than 80 wide ones in a proportional font, and tabs count as one character here. If your text contains tab characters, convert them first with the Tabs to Spaces Converter so the width is accurate. For languages written without spaces between words, such as Chinese and Japanese, the tool can only break at spaces and long-word breaking, so expect uneven lines.
Common widths
- 72: plain-text email and Git commit bodies.
- 76: MIME email and some Usenet conventions.
- 80: terminals, many code style guides.
- 100 or 120: modern code bases with wide screens.
- 40 to 60: captions, subtitles and narrow columns.
When not to wrap
Code, tables and preformatted text should usually keep their own line breaks, so wrap only comments and prose. Markdown and HTML reflow text on their own, and hard-wrapped lines can cause odd results in some renderers. If you only need to count characters per line, use the Line Length Finder first and see which lines are too long.
Related tools
The Text Aligner centres or justifies fixed-width text, the Remove Line Breaks tool joins lines, the Text Formatter adjusts spacing and case, and the Character Counter measures overall length. The Truncate Text Tool shortens text to a set number of characters.
Features
- Wraps at any width from 5 to 500
- Breaks only at spaces unless a word is too long
- Keeps indentation and blank lines
- Join mode removes hard line breaks
- Shows the longest line in the result
- Copy and download
Frequently asked questions
How do I wrap text at 80 characters?
Paste the text, set the maximum line length to 80 and leave Wrap long lines selected. Every line longer than 80 characters is broken at the last space before the limit.
What is the difference between hard and soft wrapping?
Soft wrapping is done by the editor for display only and adds no line breaks to the text. Hard wrapping inserts real line breaks into the text itself, which is what this tool does.
What line length is best for email?
Plain-text email traditionally wraps at 72 characters, which leaves room for quoting with > marks. Many style guides for code use 80 or 100. The tool lets you pick any value.
What happens to very long words and links?
If the option to break long words is on, a word longer than the line is split at the limit. Turn it off to keep links and long identifiers whole, even if the line becomes too long.
How do I remove hard line breaks from copied text?
Choose Join wrapped lines into paragraphs. Lines in the same paragraph are joined with single spaces, and blank lines still separate paragraphs. The Remove Line Breaks tool is an alternative that removes all breaks.
Does it keep indentation?
Yes. If a long line starts with spaces, the wrapped continuation lines use the same indentation, which is helpful for lists and quoted code comments.