If you want to indicate in Persian or any language that a word is being broken at the end of a line, you can use the CSS feature called hyphenate-character, which can be very useful. This feature allows you to define which character will be used to indicate the broken letters at the end of a visible line. This may be possible in some languages where a visible character has not been used, and it can assist in creating texts that are more readable.
For example, in some languages, breaking words might not visibly damage the appearance, but it can help non-native speakers easily track the text. In other cases, this option can assist the web designer to maintain the visible aesthetics of the website. Smart use of this feature can enhance the user experience.
You might think that using hyphenate-character does not significantly impact the overall design of the page, but in reality, small details can often greatly improve the quality of work. This feature is not complex or intricate in terms of depth and complexity, but its proper implementation can make web development easier.
If there is a need to implement this feature, you must ensure that your browsers and users can access it easily. Unfortunately, the browser coverage for this feature has not yet widely spread, and you should check whether this feature can be effectively used in the targeted browsers.
As a simple example of using this feature, suppose you want broken letters in Persian to be displayed with a hyphen (-) to maintain the page’s aesthetics. In the code snippet below, you can observe how to utilize this feature:
p {
hyphenate-character: '\2010';
hyphens: auto;
}Now, let's explain the above code line by line:
p {
This line begins the definition of the style for all <p> (paragraph) elements.
hyphenate-character: '\2010';
This specifies the character that will be used for breaking words—the Unicode character 2010 (a type of hyphen character) will be utilized for breaking words.
hyphens: auto;
This specifies that the browser will automatically decide whether to break words or not, depending on the language and other settings.
}
This line ends the block style for paragraphs.