How can I enable line wrap on word boundaries only in Emacs?

Question

How do I configure Emacs so that line wrapping does not break in the middle of a word?

Do you want to change the display, or where newline characters are inserted? — Ken
– Ken, Commented Jul 19, 2010 at 13:57
Not sure what version of Notepad you're using, but certainly as of version 6.1 (comes with Windows 7) it definitely does NOT save the line break. I've never actually known it to do this. While I've never defended notepad for anything before, in terms of word wrap, it implements this feature exactly perfectly (and no internet discussion!) whereas each query into how emacs does word wrap always gives you like 15 different ways of doing it on 100 different websites, blogs, posts, etc., when the poster 99% of the time just wants it to work like every other modern text editor/viewer. — Sonicsmooth
– Sonicsmooth, Commented Jul 25, 2012 at 4:36
For the original misleading title (that may turn up in search engine results), see e.g. How can I turn off Emacs's auto line wrapping for the current session?. Alt + X, toggle-truncate-lines (tab completion works) will turn word wrapping off for the current document. To make it permanent, vi ~/.emacs and add this line: (set-default 'truncate-lines t) (yes, only one single quote). — Peter Mortensen
– Peter Mortensen, Commented Sep 29, 2021 at 16:39

Anton Tarasenko · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-26 21:51:29Z

96

If you want to emulate the behavior of an editor like Notepad, you might want to turn on visual line mode. While setting word-wrap will cause line wrapping at word boundaries, any action you take on a line (e.g., moving up/down or killing) will still respect the newline character. Visual line mode will treat each display line as though it had a newline at the end.

(visual-line-mode t)

Line to add in .emacs file:

(global-visual-line-mode t)

edited Aug 26, 2011 at 21:51

Anton Tarasenko

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answered Jul 19, 2010 at 14:47

Kirk Kelsey

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2 Comments

gimboland Over a year ago

I was using visual-line-mode but was getting annoyed by the way kill-line then only killed up as far as the wrap, so for long lines of text (ie paragraphs!) I had to call it repeatedly to delete the line. So now I use (setq-default word-wrap t) instead; this enables wrapping but kill-line still kills the whole line. You may not agree that this is the preferred behaviour, of course, but for me it certainly is.

Timothy C. Quinn Over a year ago

@gimboland Thanks. Your recommendation was exactly what I was looking for.

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-29 15:34:05Z

41

M-x toggle-truncate-lines disable allows you to disable visually line breaking.

M-x auto-fill-mode + M-q allows you to word wrap for real a pre-existing paragraph.

edited Sep 29, 2021 at 15:34

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 19, 2010 at 14:03

Doomsday

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3 Comments

2NinerRomeo Over a year ago

When you say "for real" does that mean that emacs will put in a newline?

Stryker Over a year ago

I noticed it works for the new lines in an existing org file. But it doesn't wrap the existing lines that are long. Any idea how to wrap the existing lines at a certain col (i.e 80) in an org file? Thanks

Soupy Over a year ago

M-q runs fill-paragraph, which will wrap already existing lines of text. The variable fill-column determines the line length of the wrapped text.

huaiyuan · Accepted Answer · 2010-07-19 14:08:07Z

33

Add this to your init file:

(setq-default word-wrap t)

Alternatively, press C-h vword-wrap in Emacs and follow the "customize" link near the end.

answered Jul 19, 2010 at 14:08

huaiyuan

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3 Comments

Ahmad Essam Over a year ago

This is the best answer and without using any modes.

Peter Mortensen Over a year ago

Where is the init file located? Can you provide an example location? Is it file ~/.emacs?

Harry Over a year ago

@PeterMortensen The following init files are tried in this order: ~/.emacs.el, ~/.emacs, ~/.emacs.d/init.el . I prefer the last one since it allows me to put other stuff I may need in a dir dedicated to Emacs

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2021-09-29 15:43:33Z

9

I discovered longlines-mode only recently (I think I was spelunking through the Emacs Info documentation). It wraps as you would expect in other UI editors' word-wrap feature. It's especially useful when I'm reading or writing free text with no newlines (a la Microsoft Word) without the ugly mid-word wrapping that happens when you use M-x toggle-word-wrap.

See LongLines.

My configuration:

(setq longlines-wrap-follows-window-size t)
(global-set-key [(control meta l)] 'longlines-mode)

edited Sep 29, 2021 at 15:43

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jul 22, 2010 at 20:51

rgiar

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2 Comments

Eric Anderson Over a year ago

According to the wiki, long lines mode is deprecated in favor of visual line mode (mentioned in Anton's answer below.

Peter Mortensen Over a year ago

In which file (incl. location) should the configuration be placed?

GDavid · Accepted Answer · 2025-08-30 19:29:03Z

0

Enable global-word-wrap-whitespace-mode.

To make it permanent, add (global-word-wrap-whitespace-mode t) to your .emacs file or enable it with its customize-option.

answered Aug 30 at 19:29

GDavid

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