diff --git a/src/frontends/qt4/GuiFontMetrics.cpp b/src/frontends/qt4/GuiFontMetrics.cpp
index 1d472b5ceb..a1d5b40094 100644
--- a/src/frontends/qt4/GuiFontMetrics.cpp
+++ b/src/frontends/qt4/GuiFontMetrics.cpp
@@ -282,7 +282,8 @@ bool GuiFontMetrics::breakAt(docstring & s, int & x, bool const rtl, bool const
 	tl.setText(qs);
 	tl.setFont(font_);
 	QTextOption to;
-	to.setWrapMode(force ? QTextOption::WrapAnywhere : QTextOption::WordWrap);
+	to.setWrapMode(force ? QTextOption::WrapAtWordBoundaryOrAnywhere
+	                     : QTextOption::WordWrap);
 	tl.setTextOption(to);
 	tl.beginLayout();
 	QTextLine line = tl.createLine();
diff --git a/status.22x b/status.22x
index b9aed110db..492f08b8bf 100644
--- a/status.22x
+++ b/status.22x
@@ -133,6 +133,9 @@ What's new
 
 - Fix bad painting of collapsable insets sub-label when selecting (bug 10475).
 
+- Always prefer breaking lines at word boundaries even for very long words. This
+  fixes line breaking issues most noticeably in languages where spaces are rare
+  such as Chinese (bug 10299).
 
 * INTERNALS