You could instead just define the edge case behaviour so it is sane and consistent, e.g Text always overflows unless otherwise specified, or text is always clip

You could instead just define the edge case behaviour so it is sane and consistent, e.g Text always overflows unless otherwise specified, or text is always clipped, rather than "lets stop the thing doing what it says it's doing". I swear the CSS spec considers "insane by default" To be a feature.