Why hyphens don't work with inner <span>?

Question

Why hyphens don't work with inner <span>?

3.4k Views Asked by tobias47n9e At 16 November 2025 at 11:13

I'm trying to get hyphens working on text that has <span> elements inside for highlighting. This seems to break the hyphen algorithm. Is there any way to fix the behaviour so that hyphens are placed the same as without <span> elements? I'm not asking about a workaround like 

The Code (sandbox: https://codepen.io/anon/pen/ayzxpM):

.limit {
  max-width: 50px;
  hyphens: auto;
  font-size: 20px;
  background-color: #eee;
}

span {
  color: red;
}

<div class="limit">
  <p>
    Appletreefruitthing
  </p>
  <p>
    Apple<span>tree</span>fruitthing
  </p>
</div>

Using the lang attribute

Adding the lang attribute as Vadim Ovchinnikov suggested (<div class="limit" lang="en">) can lead better results on some platform/browser combinations. On Firefox 54, Windows 10 this is the result:

But even that seems buggy. The hyphen should be black in my opinon and the hyphen algorithm seems to miss the chance to make a line break between "fruit" and "tree", also completly ignoring the max-width that is set for the container.

Original Q&A

There are 3 best solutions below

Sheo On 26 July 2017 at 07:32

hyphens: manual

togteher with

&shy;

might work see documentation here https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/h/hyphenate/

this code on codepen seems to work

<div class="limit">
  <p>
   Appletreefruitthing
  </p>
  <p>
    Apple&shy;<span>tree</span>&shy;fruit&shy;thing
  </p>
</div>

CSS

.limit {
  hyphens: manual;
}

Frank Conijn - Support Ukraine On 28 June 2018 at 21:03

Actually, it does work with spans, in a number of browsers. You just used a word that is not recognized. Here's an example with a normal English word, that works in IE (should also work in Edge) and FF on Win7:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, user-scalable=yes, initial-scale=1">
    <title>Demo</title>
<style>
div {
    max-width: 50px;
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    -moz-hyphens: auto;
    -ms-hyphens: auto;
    hyphens: auto;
    font-size: 20px;
    background-color: #eee;
}
span {
    color: red;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
    <div>
        <p>Incomprehensibilities</p>
        <p>Incom<span>pre</span>hensibilities</p>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

It does not work in Chrome on Win, because that currently (June 2018) still does not support hyphens at all. It also does not work in any iOS browser. So you will have to use soft hyphens after all. But as you stated that you were curious about the mechanism, I thought it worthwhile to still post this answer.

**Vadim Ovchinnikov** · Accepted Answer

Chrome has only partial support for hyphens property (only Mac and Android platforms), so you can't make it work on Windows.

I don't see any difference between span presence and absence in Firefox, IE and Edge (all on Windows) for this code.

To make it work there you'll need set lang for container and add vendor prefixes (for -ms-hyphens IE/Edge and -webkit-hyphens for Safari). Demo:

.limit {
  max-width: 50px;
  font-size: 20px;
  /* Safari */
  -webkit-hyphens: auto;
  /* IE, Edge */
  -ms-hyphens: auto;
  hyphens: auto;
  background-color: #eee;
}

span {
  color: red;
}

<div class="limit" lang="en">
  <p>
   Appletreefruitthing
  </p>
  <p>
    Apple<span>tree</span>fruitthing
  </p>
</div>

To work in all browsers you may shouldn't use CSS hyphens property, just insert  manually where you want hyphens.

.limit {
  max-width: 50px;
  font-size: 20px;
  background-color: #eee;
}

span {
  color: red;
}

<div class="limit">
  <p>
   Apple&shy;tree&shy;fruitthing
  </p>
  <p>
    Apple&shy;<span>tree</span>&shy;fruitthing
  </p>
</div>

Why hyphens don't work with inner <span>?

Using the lang attribute

There are 3 best solutions below

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