How to prevent text in a table cell from wrapping

Question

Does anyone know how I can prevent the text in a table cell from wrapping? This is for the header of a table, and the heading is a lot longer than the data under it, but I need it to display on only one line. It is okay if the column is very wide.

My (simplified) table is structured line this:

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>
        <div>Really long column heading</div>
      </th>
      <th>
        <div>Really long column heading</div>
      </th>
      <th>
        <div>Really long column heading</div>
      </th>
      <th>
        <div>Really long column heading</div>
      </th>
      <th>
        <div>Really long column heading</div>
      </th>
      <th>
        <div>Really long column heading</div>
      </th>
      <th>
        <div>Really long column heading</div>
      </th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>
        <div>data</div>
      </td>
      <td>
        <div>data</div>
      </td>
      <td>
        <div>data</div>
      </td>
      <td>
        <div>data</div>
      </td>
      <td>
        <div>data</div>
      </td>
      <td>
        <div>data</div>
      </td>
      <td>
        <div>data</div>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

The heading itself is wrapped in a div inside the th tag for reasons pertaining to the javascript on the page.

The table is coming out with the headings wrapping onto multiple lines. This seems to only happen when the table is sufficiently wide, as the browser is trying to avoid horizontal scrolling. In my case, though, I want horizontal scrolling.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

There are at least two ways to do it:

• use nowrap attribute inside the "td" tag:

nowrap="nowrap"

• Use non-breakable spaces between your words:

Really long column heading

Answer 2

th {
  white-space: nowrap;
}

will force the contents of <th> to display on one line.

Answer 3

<th nowrap="nowrap">

or

<th style="white-space:nowrap;">

or

<th class="nowrap">
<style type="text/css">
.nowrap { white-space: nowrap; }
</style>