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Christian Kaindl
Christian Kaindl

Posted on

Use hyphenation on Dev.to?

I think it would be cool to have articles use hyphenation, so their lines are more similar in length.

p {
  hyphens: auto;
}

This can be done with CSS today and has basic support from all major browsers. And hey, if a browser does not support it, it's fine, sentences will be displayed just fine. I guess that is the definition of progressive enhancement :)
With a simple @-rule it could be used together with text-align: justify! <-- This looks totally awesome and professional. #cutting-edge :)
Hyphenation documentation on MDN

Hyphenation example

I recently read an article where it was used and I was surprised this is already possible, so I think it would give a really nice experience to most people even though it is only a small addition ❀

What does everybody else think on this?

Top comments (6)

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codemouse92 profile image
Jason C. McDonald • Edited

Augh! Me as a typesetting enthusiast wants to say "yes, please, do this!" Me as a dyslexic reader says "no, please, don't!" (I have a much harder time reading around dashes - takes me a few seconds.)

I was not prepared for this inner conflict!

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christiankaindl profile image
Christian Kaindl

:D Yes that is true, and that was also my initial thought, that is could be a limitation for some people.

Another possibility would be to only use it on mobile. On narrow devices, line breaks are oftentimes awful, so hyphenation could help in this scenario.

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jballanc profile image
Joshua Ballanco

If it's just a single CSS property change, it seems like this would be fairly easy to implement as a user preference.

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alephnaught2tog profile image
Max Cerrina • Edited

Comparison...!

style comparison

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courier10pt profile image
Bob van Hoove

To me the one on the right looks more inviting. Just 1 opinion.

But hey I learned something CSS :) Thanks for writing.

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christiankaindl profile image
Christian Kaindl

Comparison on mobile...

Comparison between `hyphen: auto; text-align: justify;` and none