Ignore <br> with CSS? - css

Question

I'm working on a site which has line breaks inserted as <br> in some of the headings. Assuming I can't edit the source HTML, is there a way with CSS I can ignore these breaks?
I'm mobile optimising the site so I don't really want to use JavaScript.

Answer 1

With css, you can "hide" the br tags and they won't have an effect:
br {
display: none;
}
If you only want to hide some within a specific heading type, just make your css more specific.
h3 br {
display: none;
}

Answer 2

Note: This solution only works for Webkit browsers, which incorrectly apply pseudo-elements to self-closing tags.
As an addendum to above answers it is worth noting that in some cases one needs to insert a space instead of merely ignoring <br>:
For instance the above answers will turn
Monday<br>05 August
to
Monday05 August
as I had verified while I tried to format my weekly event calendar. A space after "Monday" is preferred to be inserted. This can be done easily by inserting the following in the CSS:
br {
content: ' '
}
br:after {
content: ' '
}
This will make
Monday<br>05 August
look like
Monday 05 August
You can change the content attribute in br:after to ', ' if you want to separate by commas, or put anything you want within ' ' to make it the delimiter! By the way
Monday, 05 August
looks neat ;-)
See here for a reference.
As in the above answers, if you want to make it tag-specific, you can. As in if you want this property to work for tag <h3>, just add a h3 each before br and br:after, for instance.
It works most generally for a pseudo-tag.

Answer 3

If you add in the style
br{
display: none;
}
Then this will work. Not sure if it will work in older versions of IE though.

Answer 4

This is how I do it:
br {
display: inline;
content: ' ';
clear:none;
}

Answer 5

You can use span elements instead of the br if you want the white space method to work, as it depends on pseudo-elements which are "not defined" for replaced elements.
HTML
<p>
To break lines<span class="line-break">in a paragraph,</span><span>don't use</span><span>the 'br' element.</span>
</p>
CSS
span {white-space: pre;}
span:after {content: ' ';}
span.line-break {display: block;}
span.line-break:after {content: none;}
DEMO
The line break is simply achieved by setting the appropriate span element to display:block.
By using IDs and/ or Classes in your HTML markup you can easily target every single or combination of span elements by CSS or use CSS selectors like nth-child().
So you can e.g. define different break points by using media queries for a responsive layout.
And you can also simply add/ remove/ toggle classes by Javascript (jQuery).
The "advantage" of this method is its robustness - works in every browser that supports pseudo-elements (see: Can I use - CSS Generated content).
As an alternative it is also possible to add a line break via pseudo-elements:
span.break:before {
content: "\A";
white-space: pre;
}
DEMO

Answer 6

For me looks better like this:
Some text, Some text, Some text
br {
display: inline;
content: '';
}
br:after {
content: ', ';
display: inline-block;
}
<div style="display:block">
<span>Some text</span>
<br>
<span>Some text</span>
<br>
<span>Some text</span>
</div>

Answer 7

For that you can just do like this:
br{display: none;}
and if it is inside some PRE tag, then you can and if you want the PRE tag to behave like a regular block element, you can use this CSS :
pre {white-space: normal;}
Or you can follow the style of Aneesh Karthik C
like :
br {content: ' '}
br:after {content: ' '}
I think you got it

Answer 8

As per your question, to solve this problem for Firefox and Opera using Aneesh Karthik C approach you need to add "float" right" attribute.
Check the example here. This CSS works in
Firefox (26.0) , Opera (12.15), Chrome (32.0.1700) and Safari (7.0)
br {
content: " ";
float:right;
}
I hope this will answer your question!!

Answer 9

While this question appears to already have been solved, the accepted answer didn't solve the problem for me on Firefox.
Firefox (and possibly IE, though I haven't tried it) skip whitespaces while reading the contents of the "content" tag. While I completely understand why Mozilla would do that, it does bring its share of problems.
The easiest workaround I found was to use non-breakable spaces instead of regular ones as shown below.
.noLineBreaks br:before{
content: '\a0'
}
Have a look.

Answer 10

Yes you can ignore this <br>.
You may need this especially in case of responsive design where you need to remove breaks for mobile devices.
HTML
<h2>
Where ever you go <br class="break"> i am there.
</h2>
CSS for mobile example
/* Resize the browser window to check */
#media (max-width: 640px)
{
.break {display: none;}
}
Check out this Codepen:
https://codepen.io/fluidbrush/pen/pojGQyM

Answer 11

You can usedisplay:contents
br {
display:contents;
}
see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/display-box
[display:contents;] These elements don't produce a specific box by themselves. They are replaced by their pseudo-box and their child boxes [...] most browsers will remove from the accessibility tree any element with a display value of contents. [...] no longer be announced by screen reading technology.

Answer 12

You can simply convert it in a comment..
Or you can do this:
br {
display: none;
}
But if you do not want it why are you puting that there?