Soft vs Hard word wrap in Emacs

Question

There are (in my mind) two types of word wrapping:

Hard : Actually edit the file to have lines of a maximum length
Soft : Just wrap in the editor, but the underlying file still has long lines.

I can't figure out how to make Emacs do these two different types of word wrapping (most people just talk about "word wrap", without distinguishing which they are talking about).

C-h r to visit the Emacs manual. Then i wrap TAB RET. That completes wrap to wrapping and then visits the part of the manual (node Continuation Lines) that talks about this. In that node you also find a link to node Visual Line Mode, which talks about your "soft" wrapping. — Drew, Sep 23 '16 at 16:20

score 22 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 08 '20 at 18:11

22

Emacs uses visual-line-mode for the soft-wrap and auto-fill-mode (and/or refill-mode) for the hard-wrap. See What is the difference between refill-mode and auto-fill-mode? for the difference between the two.

edited Feb 08 '20 at 18:11

Keith Pinson

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answered Sep 23 '16 at 16:11

Stefan

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Soft vs Hard word wrap in Emacs

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