OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Content Truncator
Word Boundary Cuts, Custom Endings and Before and After Length Counts
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How the Content Truncator works
A content truncator shortens text to a fixed number of characters or words and adds an ellipsis, without chopping a word in half. Paste a description, excerpt or post, set the limit, and copy a version that fits the space it has to go in.
Excerpts, meta descriptions, product cards, push notifications and social posts all have a length limit. Cutting by hand means counting characters, then fixing the half-word left at the end. This tool does both in one step and shows the length before and after, so you can see how much was removed.
How the content truncator counts
In character mode the ending counts toward the limit, so a 160-character limit with "…" gives 159 characters of text plus the ellipsis, never 161. Characters are counted as code points, so an emoji or accented letter counts once rather than twice. With word boundaries on, the cut moves back to the last space so no word is split, then any trailing comma, colon, dash or space is removed before the ending is added. In word mode the text keeps its first N words and the ending follows the last one.
Which ending to use
The single ellipsis character "…" is one character and the typographic choice. Three dots "..." take three characters and suit plain-text fields that reject special characters. Choose None for a hard cut with no marker. If the text already fits within the limit it is returned unchanged, with no ending added.
FAQ
How long should a meta description be?
Google cuts snippets by pixel width rather than a fixed count, which works out at roughly 150 to 160 characters on desktop and a little less on mobile. Truncating at 155 characters with a word boundary keeps the whole description visible in most results.
Does the ellipsis count toward the limit?
Yes in character mode, because the limit is usually a hard cap such as a database column or a platform field, and the ending has to fit inside it. In word mode the ending is added after the last kept word and is not counted as a word.
Why is the result shorter than my limit?
With word boundaries on, the tool backs up to the last whole word instead of splitting one, and removes trailing punctuation and spaces before the ending. Turn word boundaries off for an exact cut at the limit, which may end partway through a word.
Should I truncate in HTML or with CSS?
Truncate the text itself when the limit is fixed, such as meta tags, feeds, SMS or database fields. For display on a web page, CSS line clamping keeps the full text in the page for search engines and screen readers and adapts to the width of the screen.
See also: all Writing & Editing tools, Lists & Lines, Markdown & HTML, Ciphers & Alphabets.
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