Word Wrap Tool
| Width | Home turf |
|---|---|
| 72 | git commit messages (indents land inside 80) |
| 78 | plain-text email recommendation (RFC 5322) |
| 80 | terminals, README files, the classical width |
| 120 | modern code linters |
Paste long-line text, set a column width, and this tool re-flows it - breaking at word boundaries, never mid-word, preserving every paragraph break. The classic targets are programmed into the culture: 80 columns for terminals and plain-text email, 72 for git commit messages (their logs indent four spaces, and 72 plus the indent fits the 80 a maintainer's terminal shows), 120 for modern linters that gave up on the museum widths.
This is the complement of the remove-line-breaks tool: that one unwraps the hard breaks pasted out of PDFs, this one puts deliberate breaks back in for places that refuse to wrap on their own - plain-text email, commit messages, README files, monospace reports. Everything runs in this browser tab, nothing uploads, and the wrapped output replaces nothing until you copy it out.
How to use
- Paste your text and set the column width - the wrapped version builds live at word boundaries.
- Pick a famous width from the anchors: 72 for git commits, 80 for terminals and plain-text email, 120 for modern code lines.
- Copy the re-flowed result; paragraph breaks in your original are preserved as-is.
Frequently asked questions
How do I wrap text at 80 characters?
Paste it above and set the width to 80 - the tool re-flows the text, breaking only between words, so no word is ever split. Paragraph breaks survive as blank lines. The count line reports how many lines the result now runs, which is the number a plain-text email or README will actually occupy on an old-school terminal.
Why does git recommend 72 characters for commit messages?
Because git indents and hangs commit text: log views, email patches and terminal tooling add their own margins, and 72 characters plus a typical indent lands inside the 80-column window that terminals and plain-text conventions assume. The subject line is shorter still - 50 characters is the popular target - so the whole message reads cleanly everywhere it travels.
What is the difference between hard and soft wrap?
Hard wrap inserts real line breaks into the text - what this tool does - so the breaks survive everywhere, including in programs and formats that never wrap on their own. Soft wrap is a display choice: the editor folds long lines on screen while the file still holds one enormous line. Paste into plain-text email and only hard wrap protects you; paste into a word processor and soft wrap handles it.
What happens to long unbreakable words like URLs?
They are left intact rather than split - a broken URL is worse than a long line, because pasting half a link fails silently. The lines that contain them will overshoot the column width by however long the word is; that is the honest trade. If a hard limit is absolute (a system that rejects long lines), shorten the URL first, then wrap.
Why is 80 characters even a thing?
History with a long tail: punch cards held 80 columns, then terminals inherited the width, then protocols written for terminals standardized it - plain-text email still recommends lines of no more than 78 characters so quoting one layer deep stays inside 80. Modern screens went wide, linters moved to 100 or 120, and 80 survives wherever text travels between programs instead of staying in one.