Slice Your Text Cleanly with These CSS Hacks

Text overflows ruin your clean design. Too much content spills out, cluttering your layout.

It’s messy, unprofessional, and buries my design’s vibe. But there’s a way to tame it with clean CSS tricks.

Quick Fix: Single-Line Truncation

A single line of CSS can clip text cleanly. This is my go-to for tight headers or captions.
Here’s the code to make it happen:

.single-line-truncate {
  width: 300px; /* Fixed width for the example */
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

<div class="single-line-truncate">
  Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.
</div>

It slices text neatly with dots. It keeps text from wrapping or overflowing. It only works for single lines, leaving multi-line text messy.

Next Level: Line-Clamp for Multi-Line

When I need multi-line control, this WebKit trick shines. WebKit’s line-clamp property handles multi-line text elegantly.

Here’s how to level up:

.multi-line-truncate {
  width: 300px; /* Fixed width for the example */
  display: -webkit-box;
  -webkit-line-clamp: 3;
  -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

<div class="multi-line-truncate">
  Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.
  Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.
</div>

The -webkit-line-clamp property caps text at a set line count.
Catch: It’s WebKit-only, so test older browsers (you got this, right? 😄).

Backup for Browsers Lacking WebKit Support

When browsers don’t handle WebKit properties, use max-height to mimic truncation. Here’s the setup:

.fallback-truncate {
  width: 300px; /* Fixed width for the example */
  max-height: 4.5em; /* 3 lines * 1.5em (line height) */
  line-height: 1.5em;
  overflow: hidden;
}

<div class="fallback-truncate">
  Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry.
  Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.
</div>

Max-height limits text to a set number of lines by multiplying line-height by the desired line count. The ellipsis won’t appear, but the text cuts off cleanly.

Final Takeaway

Play with these for a crisp user experience. Pair these methods for a solid multi-line truncation fix across various browsers and layouts.

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