Text in listing detail tabs does not break properly when wrapping

I couldn’t find this issue mentioned but if it’s been covered in the past probably I wasn’t searching for the right terms – or maybe the issue is in something I’m doing wrong.

The issue is in the tabbed area of the listing detail. When wrapping the text does not break properly at full words, but breaks words arbitrarily between lines, sometimes with just one letter.

Since WordPress itself handles word breaks just fine in normal posts then there must be something in the custom pages or the tabbing that is interfering.

For example:

A line ending with the word “doctor” breaks at “doct” with “or” on the next line, rather than breaking before the word starts (or hyphenating properly, which would be “doc-tor”).

In another case, the word “the” at the end of the line broke after the letter “t” with “he” on the next line.

Actually I see that it is not just in the tabbed area that this is occurring – it also afflicts the summary lines in the category and search listings.

Any thoughts or ideas?