How to Prevent Line Break on Special Characters

[connect.ryanburrell]

I have variable length text in a textfied that is to be wrapped in multiple lines. The problem is sometimes the content has the following text

"/ D.O.B : /"   which at times break like this "/ D.O.

B: /".      Is there a way to prevent linebreak on the period and slash symbol. I already know about non-breaking hyphen and non-breaking space. But how can I prevent a line break on other characters?

In css I would use the following:

white-space:nowrap;[/code]

But how can this be done in jasperreports?