What is the difference between "word-break: break-all" versus "word-wrap: break-word" in CSS

Question

I am currently wondering what is the difference between the two. When I used both they seem to break the word if it is not fitting the container. But why did W3C made two ways to do it?

Answer 1

word-wrap: break-word recently changed to overflow-wrap: break-word

• will wrap long words onto the next line.
• adjusts different words so that they do not break in the middle.

word-break: break-all

• irrespective of whether it’s a continuous word or many words, breaks them up at the edge of the width limit. (i.e. even within the characters of the same word)

So if you have many fixed-size spans which get content dynamically, you might just prefer using word-wrap: break-word, as that way only the continuous words are broken in between, and in case it’s a sentence comprising many words, the spaces are adjusted to get intact words (no break within a word).

And if it doesn’t matter, go for either.