Text Truncator - Truncate Text by Characters or Words

Truncate text by characters or words

Paste any text and set a character or word limit. The tool will shorten the text and append an ellipsis at the end, middle, or start of the result. A live counter shows how many characters or words you have and how many are over the limit.

Ellipsis position

• End: The most common style. Text is cut from the right: Hello wor…
• Middle: Preserves the start and end of the text: Hello…world
• Start: Cuts from the left, keeping the end: …ello world

Word boundary breaking

When truncating by characters, enabling Break on word boundary walks back to the nearest space so the cut doesn't happen in the middle of a word. Disable it if you need an exact character count.

Common use cases

• Trimming meta descriptions to 155 characters for SEO.
• Generating preview snippets with a fixed word count.
• Shortening database field values to meet column length constraints.

CSS truncation alternative

For single-line truncation in HTML, CSS is often a better approach than pre-processing text:

white-space: nowrap;
overflow: hidden;
text-overflow: ellipsis;

For multi-line truncation (e.g., clamp to 3 lines), use the WebKit line clamp approach, which is now supported in all major browsers:

display: -webkit-box;
-webkit-line-clamp: 3;
-webkit-box-orient: vertical;
overflow: hidden;

Use this tool when you need the actual truncated string stored in a variable or database - not just visually hidden with CSS.

CMS and platform field length guide