text-autospace

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

The text-autospace CSS property allows you to specify the space applied between Chinese/Japanese/Korean (CJK) and non-CJK characters.

Creates the default behavior to automatically apply spacing between CJK and non-CJK characters and around punctuation. This value has the same effect as applying both ideograph-alpha and ideograph-numeric.

<autospace>

Provides more control over spacing behaviors. It accepts the keyword no-autospace, or a combination of one or more of ideograph-alpha, ideograph-numeric, and punctuation, optionally followed by insert or replace.

no-autospace: Disables automatic spacing between CJK and non-CJK characters.
ideograph-alpha: Adds spacing only between ideographic characters (such as Katakana and Han) and non-ideographic letters (such as Latin). It does not add spacing between ideographic characters and non-ideographic numbers.
ideograph-numeric: Adds spacing only between ideographic characters (such as Katakana and Han) and non-ideographic numbers (such as Latin). It does not add spacing between ideographic characters and non-ideographic letters.
punctuation: Adds non-breaking spacing around punctuation as required by language-specific typographic conventions.
insert: Adds the specified spacing only if there are no existing spaces between the ideographic and non-ideographic scripts.
replace: Replaces existing spacing (such as U+0020) between ideographic and non-ideographic characters with the specified spacing.

auto

Lets the browser choose typographically appropriate spacing. The spacing may vary across browsers and platforms.

Note: If neither insert nor replace are specified, the behavior is the same as insert.

Note: This property is additive with the word-spacing and letter-spacing properties. The amount of spacing contributed by the letter-spacing setting is added to the spacing created by text-autospace. The same applies to word-spacing.

Formal definition

Initial value	`normal`
Applies to	text elements
Inherited	yes
Computed value	as specified
Animation type	discrete

Formal syntax

text-autospace = 
  normal       |
  <autospace>  |
  auto         

<autospace> = 
  no-autospace                                        |
  [ ideograph-alpha || ideograph-numeric || punctuation ] || [ insert | replace ]

Examples

This example shows the difference between various values of text-autospace. Try selecting a value from the drop-down box to see how it affects the spacing in the text.

<form>
  <label for="autospace">Choose value for <code>text-autospace:</code></label>
  <select name="autospace" id="autospace">
    <option selected value="no-autospace">no-autospace</option>
    <option value="normal">normal</option>
    <option value="ideograph-alpha">ideograph-alpha</option>
    <option value="ideograph-numeric">ideograph-numeric</option>
  </select>
</form>
<div class="unsupported">
  <code>text-autospace</code> is not supported in your browser.
</div>

html

<main>
  <figure class="no-autospace">
    <figcaption>
      <code>
        text-autospace: <span id="autospace-value">no-autospace</span>;
      </code>
    </figcaption>
    <div>
      <p>HTML超文本标记语言</p>
      <p>42四十二</p>
    </div>
  </figure>
</main>

css

.no-autospace {
  text-autospace: no-autospace;
}
.auto {
  text-autospace: auto;
}
.normal {
  text-autospace: normal;
}
.ideograph-alpha {
  text-autospace: ideograph-alpha;
}
.ideograph-numeric {
  text-autospace: ideograph-numeric;
}

figure {
  margin: 1rem;
  div {
    font-size: 2rem;
    padding: 1rem;
    font-family: sans-serif;
    border: tomato solid 1px;
  }
  p {
    margin: 0;
  }
}
main {
  max-width: max-content;
}
@supports not (text-autospace: normal) {
  form {
    display: none;
  }
  .unsupported {
    color: red;
  }
}
@supports (text-autospace: normal) {
  .unsupported {
    display: none;
  }
}

const chose = document.querySelector("#autospace");
const fig = document.querySelector("figure");
const codeValue = document.querySelector("#autospace-value");
chose.addEventListener("change", (e) => {
  fig.className = e.target.value;
  codeValue.innerText = e.target.value;
});

Specifications

Specification
CSS Text Module Level 4 # propdef-text-autospace

Browser compatibility

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This page was last modified on ⁨Oct 30, 2025⁩ by MDN contributors.

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