Text Truncator

Shorten text to a specified word or character limit. Ideal for meta descriptions, social media snippets, and preview text.

Input: 0 chars / 0 words Output: 0 chars / 0 words

Frequently Asked Questions

Google typically displays meta descriptions up to about 155–160 characters. Descriptions longer than this are truncated with "…" in search results. Aim for 120–158 characters to ensure important content isn't cut off. Use this tool with a 158-character limit to verify.

When enabled, the text is cut at the last complete word that fits within the limit, avoiding mid-word breaks. For example, at 20 characters, "The quick brown fox" would truncate to "The quick brown…" rather than "The quick brown f…". This produces more natural-looking snippets.

  • Meta description: ~155 characters
  • Twitter/X: 280 characters
  • LinkedIn post: 700 characters (before "see more")
  • Facebook post: 477 characters (before "see more")
  • Open Graph description: ~200 characters

Character boundary truncation cuts the text at an exact character count, which may split a word mid-syllable (e.g., "extraordi…"). Word boundary truncation cuts at the last complete word that fits within the character limit, producing a cleaner, more readable result (e.g., "extraordinary…" truncated at 10 characters would become "extraordin…" vs "extraor…" depending on mode). For user-facing text like meta descriptions, card previews, and social snippets, word boundary truncation almost always reads better and is the recommended default.

The ellipsis (…) should be placed immediately at the end of the truncated text with no space before it when following a word, e.g., "The quick brown fox…". If you cut mid-word (character boundary without word wrapping), place it directly after the partial word, e.g., "The quick bro…". The ellipsis character (… U+2026) is preferred over three separate dots (...) because it is a single typographic character, renders more neatly, and counts as one character towards your limit rather than three — which matters for tight limits like Twitter or meta descriptions.

CSS text-overflow: ellipsis is a purely visual truncation — the full text is present in the HTML but the browser clips it with "…" based on the container width. Screen readers and search engines may still access the full text. Server-side truncation (or this tool) physically shortens the string before it reaches the browser — the truncated version is what gets stored, indexed, and served. Use CSS truncation when you want responsive display with the full text available; use server-side truncation when the limit is a hard constraint (database field, API character limit, SEO meta tag) where the extra text must not be stored or transmitted.

Google typically displays meta descriptions up to approximately 155–160 characters in desktop search results and slightly fewer (~120 characters) on mobile. Descriptions exceeding this are truncated mid-sentence with "…". Best practice is to keep meta descriptions between 120 and 158 characters — long enough to be descriptive but safely under the cut-off. Include your primary keyword naturally within the first 100 characters. Note that Google sometimes rewrites meta descriptions dynamically based on the query, so even a well-crafted description may not always be shown verbatim.

Twitter/X allows posts up to 280 characters for standard accounts (doubled from the original 140-character limit in 2017). URLs are always counted as 23 characters regardless of their actual length, due to the t.co URL shortener. Twitter Blue (X Premium) subscribers may post longer content — up to 25,000 characters — but standard feed previews are still truncated. When drafting tweets for engagement, aim for 71–100 characters for the highest retweet rates according to social media research, keeping tweets concise even within the 280-character allowance.

Truncation cuts the text at a fixed point and appends an ellipsis — it preserves the original wording but removes everything after the cut. It is best when the beginning of the text is the most important part (headlines, opening sentences of articles). Summarisation condenses the full meaning into a shorter form using different words — it requires understanding the content and is produced by AI tools or human editors. Use truncation for snippets, previews, and UI space constraints. Use summarisation when you need a meaningful overview rather than a literal excerpt, such as email digests, abstract generation, or SEO meta descriptions written from scratch.

In SQL databases, a VARCHAR(n) column stores strings up to n characters. In strict SQL mode (MySQL) or by default in PostgreSQL, inserting a string longer than n raises an error. In MySQL's non-strict (default) mode, the string is silently truncated to n characters with a warning — the excess data is permanently lost without any visible error to the application. This silent truncation is a common source of data corruption bugs. Best practice is to truncate strings to the column limit before inserting them, using tools like this one or server-side code, and always enable strict SQL mode in production databases to catch oversized inputs as errors.

About This Text Truncator

This free text truncator cuts any text to a maximum number of characters or words, with a configurable ellipsis suffix. The output is ready to use in meta descriptions, card excerpts, or any UI element with a strict length limit.

When to use this tool

  • Trimming article excerpts to a fixed character count
  • Generating meta description previews within the character limit
  • Preparing card descriptions for a UI component with a length constraint
  • Testing how an interface element handles unexpectedly long strings

Standards & References

How It Works

Paste & Configure

Paste your text and choose the truncation mode (characters or words), the limit, the ellipsis string, and whether to cut at a word boundary.

Live Preview

The truncated output and progress bar update in real time. The bar turns red when the input exceeds the limit, and shows how close you are.

Copy the Snippet

Copy the truncated text and paste directly into your meta description field, social media scheduler, or CMS excerpt box.

Common Use Cases

SEO Meta Descriptions

Trim meta descriptions to 155–160 characters to prevent Google from truncating them in search results. Use the word-boundary option for a clean cut.

Social Media Snippets

Shorten article summaries to fit Twitter's 280-character limit, LinkedIn's preview, or Facebook's post description before the "see more" cut-off.

Card & Tile Previews

Generate excerpt text for blog post cards, product listings, or news tickers that display a fixed number of words before a "Read more" link.

Email Subject Lines

Keep email subjects under 50 characters to avoid being cut off in mobile inboxes. The character-limit mode with word boundary gives clean results.

Database Column Limits

Pre-truncate strings to match a database column's VARCHAR limit before bulk inserting, preventing silent truncation or errors in your ORM.

Ad Copy Length

Google Ads headlines are limited to 30 characters; descriptions to 90. Use this tool to trim and verify copy before uploading to your ad account.

Related Text Tools

Word & Character Counter
Find & Replace
Lorem Ipsum Generator
Whitespace Cleaner

Related Articles

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

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

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

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

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

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