force long strings to wrap...how?

Would anyone know of a way to force long strings to wrap...say at 40 characters using JavaScript?

Say is I have a reoccurring class labeled class="location" I can get to each item with that following -
//getElementsByClass Written By: Dustin Diaz
//http://www.dustindiaz.com/getelementsbyclass/

//Slight minor modification by: Jon Christopher
//http://www.MondayByNoon.com */

function getElementsByClass(node,searchClass,tag) {
var classElements = new Array();
var els = node.getElementsByTagName(tag); // use "*" for all elements
var elsLen = els.length;
var pattern = new RegExp("\\b"+searchClass+"\\b");
for (i = 0, j = 0; i < elsLen; i++) {
if ( pattern.test(els[i].className) ) {
classElements[j] = els[i];
j++;
}
}
return classElements;
}

function tree(num){
var myEls = getElementsByClass(document,'location,'p');
// find string count and if over 40 insert <br />
// ???????????????????????????????????????
}

Or would this be better done server side?

You can use the substring method:// assumes less than 80
if (myEls.length > 40) {
str1 = myEls.substring(0,40);
str2 = myEls.substring(40,myEls.length);
alert(str1+'<br />'+str2);
}

http://javascript.about.com/library/blspline.htm has a script to wrap text at a specified number of characters that only breaks words that are longer than the specified length. All other new lines will be inserted between words.