Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!osu-cis!tut!allosaur!bob
From: bob@allosaur.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield)
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: Re: help with emacs
Summary: use auto-fill-mode
Keywords: easy question (I hope)
Message-ID: <4022@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 7 Jan 88 21:52:35 GMT
References: <874@uop.edu>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer & Information Science
Lines: 27

In article <874@uop.edu> clmebri@uop.edu (Brian Joseph Maiorella) writes:
>I'm sure there is an easy way to stop emacs from chopping words off and
>wrapping half over to the next column.

Say "M-x apropos fill" and you'll find out about (among other stuff):

auto-fill-mode:
Toggle auto-fill mode.
With arg, turn auto-fill mode on iff arg is positive.
In auto-fill mode, inserting a space at a column beyond  fill-column
automatically breaks the line at a previous space.

fill-paragraph:
Fill paragraph at or after point.
Prefix arg means justify as well.

In my .emacs, I have:

(setq text-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)
(setq outline-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill)

and all works as desired.  Enjoy!
-=-
 Bob Sutterfield, Department of Computer and Information Science
 The Ohio State University; 2036 Neil Ave. Columbus OH USA 43210-1277
 bob@ohio-state.{arpa,csnet} or ...!cbosgd!osu-cis!bob
 soon: bob@cis.ohio-state.edu