You may want to have a look at Text::Wrap or Damian Conway's Text::Autoformat. 
use Text::Wrap;
$Text::Wrap::columns = 80;
$text = "blah blah blah...";
print wrap('','',$paragraph);

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   MeowChow                                   
               s aamecha.s a..a\u$&owag.print

In reply to Re: Force paragraph width, line length, fixed width by MeowChow
in thread Force paragraph width, line length, fixed width by Bliss

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
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