💥 How to Handle Long Meet Names with overflow-wrap: anywhere

Adam C. | 1 day ago

If you've ever worked with user-generated data (like swim meet names, usernames, or hashtags), you've likely run into this:

A single long word with no spaces breaks your layout.

For example:

The2025NSCAgeGroupChampionshipsPresentedBySwimStandardsDotCom

This kind of string won't wrap naturally — and it might stretch your card, table, or even the entire mobile page.

Let’s fix that.

🧵 The Problem

By default, browsers only break lines:

at spaces,

hyphens (-),

or where language rules allow.

So a long, space-free meet name inside a container like this:

<div class="meet-name">
  The2025NSCAgeGroupChampionshipsPresentedBySwimStandardsDotCom
</div>

...will overflow, stretch, or get clipped.

✅ The Solution: overflow-wrap: anywhere

To make the string wrap even in the middle of a word, use:

.meet-name {
  overflow-wrap: anywhere;
  word-break: normal; /* optional, for clarity */
}

🔍 Why This Works

overflow-wrap: anywhere tells the browser:

"Wrap at normal places (like spaces) if possible, but if not, break wherever you must to avoid overflow."

It won’t break every word unnecessarily — only when there's no good break point. So regular short names like Summer Champs 2025 won’t be affected.

🧪 Example

Before:

.meet-name {
  overflow-wrap: normal;
}

Result: long name explodes the layout.

After:

.meet-name {
  overflow-wrap: anywhere;
}

Result: the long name breaks cleanly and respects the container width.

📱 Mobile Friendly

This is especially helpful for:

mobile layouts with limited width

tables and cards where overflow ruins spacing

search results with unpredictable meet names

✨ Bonus Tip

You can combine with:

white-space: pre-wrap;

If you want to respect line breaks (\n) and still wrap long text.

🏁 Final Thoughts

If your app handles swim meets, usernames, or imported data, you’re bound to hit long, space-free strings.
Don’t let them break your UI — let CSS handle it smartly with:

overflow-wrap: anywhere;

It’s a small fix that saves big headaches.

Let me know if you want this styled for your own site or turned into a reusable CSS class like .wrap-anywhere.