Emacs word wrap at a specific column number

Question

I like to run my editor full-screen. The only thing is, though, that when I do this, the word wrap only kicks in when the line hits the right edge of the screen. I would like it to do so, already when the line hits, say, column number 200.

How do I do that?

I would like it to happen in all modes, e.g., Org-mode. I added the line (global-visual-line-mode t) to my .emacs file, in order for the word wrapping also to work in org-mode.

I'm running Emacs 23.

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I got it working! Here is what I added to my .emacs file to make it happen:

(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill) (add-hook 'text-mode-hook   '(lambda() (set-fill-column 80))) 

Answer 1

Type M-x auto-fill-mode to activate automatic line-wrapping after a certain column. Then set the actual line width through the variable fill-column as described by user choroba (C-x f).

Note though that this works a bit differently from what other text editors do. M-q will re-format the current paragraph.

Answer 2

You can set the line width with C-xf (set-fill-column).

Afterwards, you might need to hit M-q to reformat the current paragraph (fill-paragraph), or select text to be justified and run fill-region.