Add Line Breaks

How to add line breaks to text

1. Paste your source text

Drop a comma-separated row, a long single-line paragraph, or any block of text where you want line breaks inserted into the left textarea. The default sample (a 21-fruit comma list) shows the most common case: turning a horizontal list into a vertical one. Counting and conversion start immediately.

2. Pick the break rule

Seven modes cover every common pattern. After every comma is the default and matches the most common task (CSV row to vertical list). After every semicolon handles SQL IN() clauses and Excel exports that use a semicolon delimiter (common on EU locales). After every sentence wraps prose on punctuation. Every N characters wraps to a fixed column width (useful for 72-char email or 80-char terminal output). Every N words chunks long copy into balanced lines. Custom delimiter handles anything else (pipes, slashes, tabs, multi-character separators).

3. Adjust N or the custom delimiter

For the two N-based modes, the N field accepts any positive integer. For custom delimiter, type the exact string to split on. Default for custom is , (comma + space) which behaves like the comma mode but also strips the space.

4. Toggle trim and skip-empty

Both toggles default on. Trim each line strips leading and trailing whitespace from every output line. Skip empty lines removes blank lines from the result. Turn these off if the surrounding system needs whitespace or blank-line markers preserved.

5. Copy or download

Copy puts the output on your clipboard. Download .txt grabs a file. The counts update live: lines, characters, and words. Use the Character Counter if you need character-level metrics on the source side first.

When you need to add line breaks

Comma list to vertical list

Most common use. A row of values from a spreadsheet column ("apple, banana, cherry") becomes a clean one-per-line list. Useful for Notion checklists, GitHub issue bodies, plain-text email, Markdown bullet conversion (run the output through find-replace to add a leading dash). For the reverse direction (vertical to CSV row), use Column to Comma Separated.

SQL IN clause prep

DBAs and analysts often need to turn a long list of IDs into individual rows for a SQL IN() clause or a WHERE-clause OR chain. Paste the comma list, set mode to comma, copy the vertical output, then surround each line with quotes via your editor's column-edit mode.

Word wrap to fixed column width

Email clients and terminal viewers often expect text wrapped at 72 or 80 characters. The every-N-characters mode does this without breaking on word boundaries. For word-boundary wrap, use every-N-words at roughly 10-12 words per line for a 72-character target.

Splitting long-form copy into lines for poetry or design

Songwriters, poets, and graphic designers often need a single sentence laid out as multiple visual lines. Paste the sentence, switch to custom delimiter, type the word or punctuation mark where each break should land, and the output reflows in one click.

Cleaning chat exports

Slack and WhatsApp exports sometimes concatenate messages into single lines with semicolon separators. The semicolon mode + skip-empty toggle turns those exports back into readable line-per-message format.

Add line breaks vs remove line breaks

This tool inserts breaks where there are none. Remove Line Breaks does the opposite: collapses every newline to a space (or a custom delimiter) for the inverse operation. Pair them when you need to switch between vertical and horizontal layouts repeatedly during a copy session.

A common workflow: paste a CSV row here with comma mode to get a vertical list, edit individual lines (re-order, delete duplicates, add notes), then paste the result into Remove Line Breaks with comma-and-space delimiter to rebuild the CSV row for re-export.

For the deduplication step in the middle, send the vertical list through Remove Duplicate Words or Remove Duplicate Lines first.

Privacy and processing

All conversion runs in your browser via plain JavaScript. The textarea contents never leave your device. No network request is made when you paste, change modes, or download the output. Safe for confidential customer lists, internal IDs, and any data that should not transit a third-party server.

The Download .txt button uses the browser's built-in Blob API and writes the file straight to your downloads folder. The Copy button uses document.execCommand('copy') against the output textarea.