--- 
canonical: 'https://mwop.net/blog/2026-08-31-html-shy.html'
title: 'HTML Hyphenation Hints'
author: "[Matthew Weier O'Phinney](https://mwop.net)"
created: '2026-08-31T18:34:29-05:00'
updated: '2026-08-31T18:34:29-05:00'
tags:
  - html
  - til

---
I recently was troubleshooting how to force the browser to hyphenate a PHP class name, and discovered something new. 

The HTML entity `­` is a "soft hyphen"; it won't display unless the browser decides to introduce a line wrap at that point. 

It's shy like that.