Disadvantages to using CSS word-wrap globally?

Are there any disadvantages to using word-wrap:break-word in the following way?

body
{
    word-wrap: break-word;
}

The descriptions of the value开发者_JAVA技巧s for this property are as follows:

• normal: Break words only at allowed break points
• break-word: Allows unbreakable words to be broken

Now, this only makes a difference in the breaking of unbreakable words (i.e. continuous strings that are longer than their containers). Otherwise, it'll make no difference for 99% of text anywhere.

So, are there any disadvantages to using this globally? It can certainly solve a lot of layout issues without (at least as far as I can see) having any adverse effects. It seems better to do this once than to have to apply it everywhere you could possibly have overflowing text that would mess up your layout.

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I can't think of any disadvantages since, if you want to have some other kind of word-wrap elsewhere, you'll always be able to override this global style.

That said, if you can at all narrow down the situations in which this will be necessary, using a broad class would be preferable. There's no telling what rare but very frustrating bugs a global break-word style will cause (and in what browsers).

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I can't see any advantages of making it global on a page if the page is anything other than a test page.

For me I would not want words that are unbreakable to break at all. It's easier to read when they are not broken up. However if you want to make your text fit a div without using text-align:justify; and leaving gaps in between letters or words it might be nice.

The reason why I said in other than a test page was because sometimes, when I wanted to use place holder text besides "lorum ipsum" I would type gibberish but the div would always stretch. But since I wouldn't be using that text on the live site, I probably wouldn't use it.

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I think the only consideration would be support in IE8.

According to this, word-wrap: break-word; doesn't work in all scenarios.

This property applies to elements that have layout. An element has layout when it is absolutely positioned, is a block element, or is an inline element with a specified height or width.

Of course, this seems quite easily rectified, but it should be known in case you need to support IE8 and you intend to apply this to items that do not "have layout".

Interesting are the new CSS3 properties:

http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#word-break

http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#word-wrap