30-seconds-of-code/snippets/truncate-text-multiline.md

Truncate text multiline

If the text is longer than one line, it will be truncated for n lines and end with an ellipsis ….

HTML

<p class="truncate-text-multiline">
  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut
  labore et.
</p>

CSS

.truncate-text-multiline {
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  display: block;
  display: -webkit-box;
  height: 109.2px;
  margin: 0 auto;
  font-size: 26px;
  line-height: 1.4;
  -webkit-line-clamp: 3;
  -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
  width: 400px;
}

Demo

Explanation

1. overflow: hidden prevents the text from overflowing its dimensions (for a block, 100% width and auto height).
2. text-overflow: ellipsis makes it so that if the text exceeds its dimensions, it will end with an ellipsis.
3. width: 400px ensures the element has a dimension, to know when to get ellipsis
4. display: -webkit-box attribute that allows to work with line-clamp
5. -webkit-line-clamp: 3 number of lines to be truncated (in this case there will be only 3 visible lines)
6. -webkit-box-orient: horizontal specify that text will go vertically
7. display: block fallback for unsupported browsers
8. height: 109.2px fallback, calculated value for height, it equals font-size * line-height * numberOfLines (in this case 26 * 1.4 * 3 = 109.2)

Browser support

⚠️ Requires prefix for full support.

• https://caniuse.com/#feat=css-line-clamp