Text Truncator Articles

CSS text-overflow: ellipsis Hides Text — It Doesn't Remove It: When to Truncate at Display vs Data Layer

CSS text-overflow: ellipsis hides overflowing text but leaves the full content in the DOM — search engines read it, screen readers may announce it, and selecting the text copies the full string. Server-side truncation actually shortens the content before it reaches the client. Here's when each is appropriate, multi-line -webkit-line-clamp, the semantically superior details/summary alternative, and why meta descriptions should be written for readability not display-limit truncation.

Jun 28, 2026

Why Truncating Text at "Exactly 100 Characters" Is Harder Than It Looks: UTF-8, Word Boundaries, and HTML

Truncating at exactly 100 characters sounds simple — until you're splitting a multibyte UTF-8 sequence and producing invalid text, cutting mid-word and leaving "fo" dangling, or cutting HTML and leaving unclosed tags. Here's the byte vs code point vs grapheme cluster distinction, the word-boundary backtracking algorithm, why HTML truncation requires an actual parser (not string slicing), and why your ellipsis length has to come out of the character budget before you cut.

Jun 18, 2026

Pagination, Infinite Scroll, or "Read More": Three Answers to "This Content Is Too Long" and When Each Fits

"Read more" links, pagination, and infinite scroll are three different answers to "content is longer than the space available" — each with different SEO, accessibility, and UX trade-offs. Here's where each fits best, why infinite scroll's footer-reachability problem is well-documented, and how hybrid approaches (load-more buttons, infinite scroll with History-API pagination underneath) combine their benefits.

Jun 13, 2026

Truncation Bugs: Database VARCHAR Silent Data Loss, CSS Overflow, and Windows Path Length Limits

MySQL silently truncates strings that exceed VARCHAR column lengths — no error, just missing data. Here's database silent truncation, CSS text-overflow and multi-line clamping, the accessibility problem with truncated UI text, API response truncation flags, and the Windows 260-character path length problem.

Jun 10, 2026

Content Truncation Rules: How Every Platform Cuts Your Text — and How to Write for It

Every platform truncates differently — email subject lines at 50 characters, push notifications at 80, meta descriptions at 155. Here's the truncation rules for major platforms, how to implement word-boundary truncation in code, and using truncation as a deliberate writing technique.

Jun 9, 2026

Text Truncator — Shorten Any Text to a Set Character or Word Limit

Learn how smart text truncation works, why word boundary cuts matter, how to account for ellipsis length, and how to use a free text truncator for meta descriptions, database fields, and notification previews.

Jun 6, 2026