CSS hanging-punctuation

The CSS hanging-punctuation property determines whether punctuation marks hang outside the line box (or in the indent) at the start or at the end of a line of text.

No more than one punctuation character may hang at each edge of the line.

Also known as exdentation, or optical alignment, hanging punctuation can make the text more readable as each line, lines up with the previous line regardless of whether it has punctuation marks or not.

Syntax

Possible Values

Here are the possible values:

none

Punctuation marks don't hang.

first

An opening bracket or quote at the start of the first formatted line of an element hangs.

last

A closing bracket or quote at the end of the last formatted line of an element hangs.

force-end

A stop or comma at the end of a line hangs.

allow-end

A stop or comma at the end of a line hangs if it does not otherwise fit prior to justification.

In addition, all CSS properties also accept the following CSS-wide keyword values as the sole component of their property value:

initial

Represents the value specified as the property's initial value.

inherit

Represents the computed value of the property on the element's parent.

unset

This value acts as either inherit or initial, depending on whether the property is inherited or not. In other words, it sets all properties to their parent value if they are inheritable or to their initial value if not inheritable.

Basic Property Information

Example Code

CSS Specifications

• The hanging-punctuation property is defined in CSS Text Module Level 3 (W3C Last Call Working Draft 10 October 2013).

Vendor Prefixes

For maximum browser compatibility many web developers add browser-specific properties by using extensions such as -webkit- for Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera (newer versions), -ms- for Internet Explorer, -moz- for Firefox, -o- for older versions of Opera etc. As with any CSS property, if a browser doesn't support a proprietary extension, it will simply ignore it.

This practice is not recommended by the W3C, however in many cases, the only way you can test a property is to include the CSS extension that is compatible with your browser.

The major browser manufacturers generally strive to adhere to the W3C specifications, and when they support a non-prefixed property, they typically remove the prefixed version. Also, W3C advises vendors to remove their prefixes for properties that reach Candidate Recommendation status.

Many developers use Autoprefixer, which is a postprocessor for CSS. Autoprefixer automatically adds vendor prefixes to your CSS so that you don't need to. It also removes old, unnecessary prefixes from your CSS.

You can also use Autoprefixer with preprocessors such as Less and Sass.