Today at work, I learned something in HTML that I didn’t know before. We had a table that contained data that was wrapping when there was an embedded space. Something like this:

We had a customer who complained about the wrapping, and a couple of us were looking at why this particular column would wrap with an embedded space. We talked about expanding the width of the column and the table, and finally we decided to ask the HTML Expert.

HE took one look at it and asked, “Why don’t you just use the ‘nowrap’ attribute on the table data?”

We were both a little surprised, not having realized there was a ‘nowrap’ attribute in HTML. But we added it and it changed our table to display the way we wanted:

I felt a little silly that I didn’t know such a basic HTML attribute, but I had not run across this one before.

However, after a little reflection, I realized that I was familiar with the ‘nowrap’ attribute after all. I have been using it, just not with HTML. I’ve been applying the ‘nowrap’ attribute on my radio and my MP3 player for years.