How remove word wrap from textarea?

StoneHeart picture StoneHeart · Mar 18, 2009 · Viewed 132.7k times · Source

my simple textarea doesn't show a horizontal bar when text overflows. It wraps text for a new line. So how do I remove wordwrap and display horizontal bar when text overflows?

Answer

Partly Cloudy picture Partly Cloudy · Nov 19, 2012
textarea {
  white-space: pre;
  overflow-wrap: normal;
  overflow-x: scroll;
}

white-space: nowrap also works if you don't care about whitespace, but of course you don't want that if you're working with code (or indented paragraphs or any content where there might deliberately be multiple spaces) ... so i prefer pre.

overflow-wrap: normal (was word-wrap in older browsers) is needed in case some parent has changed that setting; it can cause wrapping even if pre is set.

also -- contrary to the currently accepted answer -- textareas do often wrap by default. pre-wrap seems to be the default on my browser.