Line Break - Mandatory Break

Mandatory Break is the line breaking behavior that forces a line to end at a specific character position, regardless of surrounding text or available space. This value applies to characters like the newline (U+000A), carriage return (U+000D), and the next line (U+0085), as well as some paragraph separators. When a mandatory break occurs, no further text can appear on the same line, and the next character begins a new line. Unlike soft breaks, which are optional and depend on context, a mandatory break is unconditional and cannot be suppressed by other line breaking rules. It also takes precedence over any adjacent character’s break opportunities, ensuring a hard stop in the text flow. This behavior is essential for preserving intentional formatting, such as line endings in poetry, code, or plain text files, where the author explicitly controls line structure.