[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #6954: Remove excessive automatic hyphenation

[Making WordPress.org]

#6954: Remove excessive automatic hyphenation
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 Reporter:  johnbillion       |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect (bug)      |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal            |  Milestone:
Component:  Plugin Directory  |   Keywords:
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 The WordPress.org site makes heavy use of automatic word hyphenation via
 `hyphens: auto; word-wrap: break-word;` in CSS. On the Plugin Directory
 this is noticeable for being overly prominent, causing many short words
 within paragraphs to be hyphenated when there's no need for it (I'm using
 latest Chrome on macOS).

 == Examples

 * https://wordpress.org/plugins/public-post-preview/ - short words such as
 "other" and "preview" are hyphenated even when they're used within short
 paragraphs.
 * https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce/ - an entire paragraph
 spanning four lines has every word at the end of the line hyphenated:
 [[Image(https://i.imgur.com/BetDB4m.png)]]
 * https://wordpress.org/plugins/jetpack/ - another paragraph almost
 entirely hyphenated:
 [[Image(https://i.imgur.com/bfEwQbj.png)]]

 == Impact

 Personally I find this makes paragraphs of text much more difficult to
 read, but I'm not overly familiar with the accessibility implications. I
 know that uneven edges are also a problem for some people.

 As far as I can tell this was implemented in r6194 to alleviate unwanted
 overflow, but there's no discussion about hyphens specifically on #2861.
 This was five years ago so browser behaviour may have been different at
 the time.

 == Proposal

 I think we should consider removing this automatic hyphenation from the
 plugin directory styles. It would be good to investigate if there are
 published guidelines from any of the major publishes around use of hyphens
 and automatic hyphenation of narrow columns of text. The accessibility
 team should be consulted and it'll need to be tested in the most popular
 browsers.

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Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6954>
Making WordPress.org <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/>
Making WordPress.org