How to use the Text Truncator
- Paste your text into Your text.
- Set Maximum length, and choose whether to Count Characters or Words.
- Pick an Ending: … (one character), … (three dots), None, or Custom…. With Custom…, type it in Custom ending.
- Keep Do not cut words in half ticked for clean cuts.
- Tick Truncate each line separately to shorten a list of lines one by one.
- Copy the result.
What it does and when to use it
Many fields have a hard length limit: product titles in a marketplace feed, push notifications, SMS previews, card layouts on a web page, database columns and preview text on a social post. Cutting by hand means counting characters and often leaves half a word dangling. The truncator does the count and the clean cut for you.
Use Characters when a system enforces a character limit. Use Words for teasers and summaries, such as “the first 25 words of each article”. With Truncate each line separately, a whole column of titles pasted from a spreadsheet can be cut in one go and pasted back.
To check the length of the result, use the Character Counter. If you want the full text kept but broken into lines of a set width, use the Text Wrapper instead. To make short values longer, for example to fill a fixed-width column, see the Text Padder.
How it works
Characters mode. If the text fits, it is returned as is. Otherwise the tool works out the room left after the ending (limit minus ending length) and keeps that many characters. Emoji and accented letters count as one character each. If the cut lands inside a word and the word option is on, the cut moves back to the last space. Trailing spaces and the marks . , ; : ! ? - are removed, then the ending is added.
Words mode. The text is split at spaces. If it has more words than the limit, the first words up to the limit are kept, joined by single spaces, and the ending is added.
All of this runs in your browser.
Worked examples
The first three use “Our spring sale ends on Friday, so order your new running shoes today.” (70 characters).
40 characters, whole words. The result is Our spring sale ends on Friday, so…, 35 characters. The next word, “order”, would not fit.
40 characters, words may be cut. With the word option off, the result is Our spring sale ends on Friday, so orde…, exactly 40 characters.
Six words, custom ending. Words mode, limit 6, ending “ [more]” gives Our spring sale ends on Friday, [more]. The comma after “Friday” stays in Words mode.
Each line separately. “Short title” and “A much longer product title that needs cutting” at 20 characters give “Short title” unchanged and A much longer….
Limits and tips
- A single word longer than the limit, or a long link, is cut mid-word because there is no space to fall back to.
- Without “Truncate each line separately”, line breaks count as characters.
Frequently asked questions
Does the ellipsis count toward the limit?
Why is my result shorter than the limit?
What is the difference between … and ...?
What if my text is already short enough?
Can I cut a list of titles at once?
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