What does word wrap do?

It inserts line breaks so no line exceeds your chosen character width, breaking only between words — reformatting a long paragraph into neat fixed-width lines for plain-text contexts.

What line width should I use?

72 characters is the email/plain-text convention (leaves room for reply quoting), 79–80 is the code standard (PEP 8, terminal width), and 65–75 characters is the readability sweet spot for prose. The tool offers presets and custom widths.

Does it break words in the middle?

By default no — it wraps at word boundaries only. An optional hard-wrap mode breaks over-long words (like URLs exceeding the width) when a strict character limit must be enforced.

Can it preserve paragraphs and indentation?

Yes — blank-line paragraph separation is kept, and options preserve leading indentation and re-wrap within it, so quoted or indented blocks stay structured.

Why is fixed-width wrapping still needed?

Plain-text email, code comments, README files, commit messages, config files, ASCII documents, and terminal output all live in monospaced fixed-width worlds where manual wrapping controls exactly how text appears.

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Word Wrap — Clean Fixed-Width Text on Demand

Monospaced worlds still rule plain-text email, code comments, README files, and commit messages — and they need lines that fit. This free tool reflows any text to a fixed character width (72, 80, or custom), breaking only between words, preserving paragraphs, with an optional hard-wrap for stubborn long strings. In-browser, no signup.

Standard Widths and Where They Come From

Width	Convention	Why
72	Plain-text email	Room for '> ' reply-quote indentation
79–80	Code (PEP 8, classic terminal)	Fits an 80-column terminal, side-by-side diffs
50	Git commit body	Readable in git log and tools
65–75	Prose readability	Optimal characters-per-line for the eye

Soft Wrap vs Hard Wrap

Soft (word-boundary): the default and the right choice almost always — never splits a word, so text stays readable. Hard: enforces the width absolutely, breaking mid-word when a token (a long URL, a hash, a path) exceeds the limit alone. Use hard wrap only when a downstream system truncates or mangles anything over the width; otherwise soft wrap keeps words whole and meaning intact.

The Readability Reason, Not Just the Technical One

Typographers put the ideal line length at 45–75 characters: longer and the eye loses its place returning to the next line; shorter and rhythm breaks. Wrapping prose to ~66 characters isn't only for terminals — it measurably improves reading comfort, which is why this tool is as useful for formatting a plain-text document as for fitting a code comment.

Common Jobs

Email — wrap at 72 so your message survives quoting across clients without ragged rewrap.
Code comments — reflow a long explanatory comment to the project's column limit.
READMEs and docs — consistent width for files read in plain-text and diff views.
Commit messages — 50-char subject discipline, 72-char body.

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Any text reflowed locally to your exact width — no upload, no account, no limits.

Word Wrap

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