AddThisFeature

Text Wrapping Rules

Decide how text breaks, truncates, and hyphenates so nothing overflows or loses meaning.

moderate Design Systems

What it adds

A per-content-type set of wrapping, breaking, and truncation rules applied across the app's components.

What your agent is told to do

5
  1. 1

    Classify the text the app renders into a few kinds — prose, identifiers, machine strings, user-supplied names, numbers — and define one wrapping rule for each kind rather than patching overflow component by component.

  2. 2

    Give long unbroken strings such as URLs, API keys, record IDs, file paths, and email addresses a break rule that lets them wrap at sensible boundaries instead of pushing their container wider than the viewport.

  3. 3

    Decide per surface whether text truncates or wraps, and make truncation reversible: anything cut off must be recoverable in full through a tooltip, a details view, or an expand control.

  4. 4

    Do not fix overflow by hiding it. Setting a container to clip its contents removes the symptom and leaves the user with a name, an error, or a total that silently ends mid-word.

  5. 5

    Text Measure Guardrails owns how wide a line of prose may be; this entry owns what happens when a string does not fit the width it has been given. Keep the two separate so a change to one does not require a change to the other.

Edge cases it handles

7
  • URLs, identifiers, hashes, and code fragments must never be hyphenated or broken at an arbitrary character, because a broken key is one the user cannot copy or verify. Break them at punctuation boundaries or let them scroll within their own container.
  • Hyphenation and word-breaking rules differ by writing system, and languages that do not use spaces between words break on entirely different boundaries. Drive the rule from the content's language rather than the interface language.
  • A button whose label wraps to two lines must still look like a button: the height grows, the icon stays aligned with the first line, and the hit area covers both lines. A label that wraps to a single character on the second line needs a shorter label, not a narrower rule.
  • When truncation hides meaning — a document title, an error message, a customer name that differs only in its last word — the full value must be reachable without navigating away. Truncation is a display convenience, never a data decision.
  • Middle truncation suits filenames and paths, where the end carries the extension and the distinguishing folder; end truncation suits sentences. Choose per content type rather than applying one everywhere.
  • Screen readers must receive the complete string, not the visually truncated one, so an ellipsis is never read as the end of a name.
  • Multi-line clamping must survive a font change or a resize. A clamp measured once at load will show three and a half lines after the layout reflows.

Definition of done

9
  • Every kind of text in the app has a defined wrapping rule, applied through shared styles rather than per-component patches.
  • No long identifier, URL, or path forces its container wider than the viewport.
  • Truncated values are recoverable in full through a tooltip, expansion, or detail view.
  • Hyphenation and breaking follow the language of the content rather than the interface.
  • Wrapped button and control labels stay legible and keep their full hit area.
  • Screen readers announce the complete string for every truncated element.
  • No container hides overflow without an alternative route to the hidden content.
  • The feature matches the existing design system.
  • No existing functionality is broken.

Related features

How it works

  1. 1

    Copy the link

    Grab the Markdown instruction URL for this feature.

  2. 2

    Give it to your AI

    Paste it into Claude Code, Cursor, v0, Lovable — whatever you build with.

  3. 3

    It inspects, then implements

    Your agent reads your existing app first, then adds the feature to fit it.

Works with your stack

These instructions are written to adapt. They tell the agent to detect your framework, match your existing design system, and reuse what you already have — rather than assuming a particular stack.

Need it tighter than that? Customize the feature and tell it exactly what you're running.