As regular Reddit users are well aware, running into posts that are essentially giant walls of text is a common occurrence. When this happens you have two choices: persevere into a dangerous world where paragraphs do not exist, or click the Back button and forget about the whole unpleasant experience. I wanted a third option, so I came up with a Chrome extension that can semi-intelligently add line breaks to HTML elements with a few clicks.
I’ve been using the extension — called “Breakup” — personally for a month or two, but it occurred to me that others might find it useful, so I’ve stuck it on the Chrome Web Store for free. It’s designed for Reddit (but should work on any site, depending on how it’s styled) and is a little rough around the edges, but it does the job, as you can see in the screenshot above.
It comes with some configurable options, including a “dark” theme and font selection, if you like to customise things. To use it, just right-click on a HTML element — in the case of Reddit, a post or comment — and select “Break up text” from the context menu. It’ll then work its magic.
Behind the scenes, it adds a paragraph every 300 characters, watching out for full stops so you don’t end up with disjointed sentences. Note that it strips out HTML tags, so formatting such as hyperlinks will be removed (though the URL will still be there). I’ll look to fix this in the future, once I get a bit more feedback.
Breakup [Chrome Web Store]
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