CSS ellipsis on second line

Question

CSS text-overflow: ellipsis on second line, is this possible? I can't find it on the net.

example:

what I want is like this:

I hope someone could help me. I need 
an ellipsis on the second line of...

but what's happening is this:

I hope someone could help me. I ... 

• FarligOpptreden: AFAIK the ellipsis will appear and cut off the text at the end of the element's width. It won't flow over to the next line. The best solution here would be to implement some server- or client-side script which automatically trims the text to a certain amount of characters and then appends the ellipsis. My guess is a client-side script would be better, which would enable you to still have all the original text available if you need it.
• Evgeny: here is a similar question: stackoverflow.com/questions/3922739/…
• Evgeny: tl;dr: it is possible only in webkit
• Jonathan: The closest I came to achieving this was add an 'after' pseudo-element for the ellipsis, and position it inline, directly after the element containing the text. But the ellipsis vanishes if the element text is too long, so you'd have to trim the text somehow, in order to make this reliable.

Answer 1

This should work in webkit browsers:

overflow: hidden;
text-overflow: ellipsis;
display: -webkit-box;
-webkit-line-clamp: 3;
-webkit-box-orient: vertical;

browser support

div {
 overflow: hidden;
 text-overflow: ellipsis;
 display: -webkit-box;
 -webkit-line-clamp: 3;
 -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
}
* { font-family: verdana; }

<div>
 The <b><a target='_blank' href='https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/CSS/-webkit-line-clamp'>-webkit-line-clamp</a></b> CSS property allows limiting of the contents of a block container to the specified number of lines. It only works in combination with the display property set to <b>-webkit-box</b> or <b>-webkit-inline-box</b> and the <b>-webkit-box-orient</b> property set to vertical. In most cases you will also want to set overflow to hidden, otherwise the contents won't be clipped but an ellipsis will still be shown after the specified number of lines. When applied to anchor elements, the truncating can happen in the middle of the text, not necessarily at the end.
</div>

• Kevin: Note that, as of this comment, -webkit-line-clamp does not respect visibility: hidden. bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45399
• lemoid: Hey - seems nice but doesn't work for me. It simply puts '...' at given line-clamp but doesnt cut rest of text (even with white-space attr)
• Robert: You may need to add overflow: hidden for this to work.
• ZetaPR: This will not work in Firefox, webkit not supported in gecko engine
• emmalyx: This does in fact work in Firefox now. It's not even necessary to specify text-overflow: ellipsis; when using this.

Answer 2

A requirement for text-overflow: ellipsis; to work is a one-line version of white-space (pre, nowrap etc). Which means the text will never reach the second line.

Ergo. Not possible in pure CSS.

My source when I was looking for the exact same thing just now: http://www.quirksmode.org/css/textoverflow.html (Quirksmode ftw!)

EDIT If the good CSS gods will implement http://www.w3.org/TR/css-overflow-3/#max-lines we can haz this in pure CSS using fragments (new) and max-lines (new). Also some more info on http://css-tricks.com/line-clampin/

EDIT 2 WebKit/Blink has line-clamp: -webkit-line-clamp: 2 will put ellipsis on 2nd line.

• Daniel: Keeping a watch, but so far is seems the gods are not with us yet: caniuse.com/#search=max-lines
• Bhoomi Bhalani: How to achieve above feature that with saas? @Rudie
• Muhammad Umer: -webkit-line-clamp: 3

Answer 3

Just use line-clamp for the browsers that support it(most modern browsers) and fall back to 1 line for older.

 .text {
 white-space: nowrap;
 text-overflow: ellipsis;
 overflow: hidden;
 @supports (-webkit-line-clamp: 2) {
 overflow: hidden;
 text-overflow: ellipsis;
 white-space: initial;
 display: -webkit-box;
 -webkit-line-clamp: 2;
 -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
 }
 }

browser support

• James: white-space: initial; saved me
• Sergiu Mare: From my point of view, I see this solution as optimal. Nowadays the websites are using a lot of JS, compared with 10 years ago, and we have to cater for performance. I prefer to use CSS to style, even if there is a small difference between browsers.
• Centerwork: Addition: if your content is not text, make sure it is set to display: inline-block
• R-D: -webkit-box-orient is deprecated
• Michel Sabchuk: Regarding -webkit-box-orient being deprecated, MDN docs has important details: Despite these prefixed properties being deprecated, the co-dependency of these three properties is a fully specified behavior and will continue to be supported.

Answer 4

I found that Skeep's answer was not enough and needed an overflow style too:

overflow: hidden;
text-overflow: ellipsis;
-webkit-line-clamp: 2;
display: -webkit-box;
-webkit-box-orient: vertical;

• Juangui Jordán: Just to mention that other solutions included -webkit-line-clamp: 3; while the question was for 2 lines, so this one is more correct.

Answer 5

As others have already answered, a pure CSS solution does not exists. There is a jQuery plugin that is very easy to use, it is called dotdotdot. It uses the container's width and height to calculate if it needs to truncate and add ellipsis.

$("#multilinedElement").dotdotdot();

Here is a jsFiddle.

• Martin Andersson: This plugin also provides lots of other utilities like adding "read more" links, it can also parse URIs and HTML markup. Good find!
• thdoan: I tried out jQuery dotdotdot 1.7.3 for an ecommerce store, to limit the product names on a grid category page to two lines. After thorough testing, we decided not to go with this plugin because sometimes, after a shift-refresh, the category page layout would be broken. YMMV. In the end we went with a very simple vanilla JS solution: if the product name element's clientHeight is less than its scrollHeight, truncate the text at a preset boundary and append "...". Sometimes a few product names can be a bit too short because of the preset boundary, but it's super stable.
• Rachel S: Easty to implement and works beautifully. Thank you!
• boyomarinov: Although it works good, unfortunately it suffers from performance issues. If your project requires multiple ellipsis usages, consider another option. In addition here's a quote from the repository: "Because its performance can not be improved, this plugin is no longer actively maintained.".
• Dejell: also, it wouldn't work if the text changes dynamically after loading :(

Answer 6

I used these css properties for line ellipsis-

overflow: hidden;
text-overflow: ellipsis;
display: -webkit-box;
-webkit-line-clamp: 3; 
-webkit-box-orient: vertical;

here -webkit-line-clamp: 3; is the number of line(3 lines) after which ... shows.

Answer 7

If anyone is trying to get line-clamp to work in flexbox, it's slightly trickier - especially once you are torture testing with really long words. The only real differences in this code snippet are min-width: 0; in the flex item containing truncated text, and word-wrap: break-word;. A hat-tip to https://css-tricks.com/flexbox-truncated-text/ for the insight. Disclaimer: at the time this answer was written, browser support was poor outside of Chrome. However, things may have improved since then.

.flex-parent {
 display: flex;
}
.short-and-fixed {
 width: 30px;
 height: 30px;
 background: lightgreen;
}
.long-and-truncated {
 margin: 0 20px;
 flex: 1;
 min-width: 0;/* Important for long words! */
}
.long-and-truncated span {
 display: inline;
 -webkit-line-clamp: 3;
 text-overflow: ellipsis;
 overflow: hidden;
 display: -webkit-box;
 -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
 word-wrap: break-word;/* Important for long words! */
}

<div class="flex-parent">
 <div class="flex-child short-and-fixed">
 </div>
 <div class="flex-child long-and-truncated">
 <span>asdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasdasd</span>
 </div>
 <div class="flex-child short-and-fixed">
 </div>
</div>

http://codepen.io/AlgeoMA/pen/JNvJdx (codepen version)

Answer 8

if someone is using SASS/SCSS and stumbles upon this question - maybe this mixin could be of help:

@mixin line-clamp($numLines : 1, $lineHeight: 1.412) {
 overflow: hidden;
 text-overflow: -o-ellipsis-lastline;
 text-overflow: ellipsis;
 display: block;
 /* autoprefixer: off */
 display: -webkit-box;
 -webkit-line-clamp: $numLines;
 -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
 max-height: $numLines * $lineHeight + unquote('em');
}

this only adds the ellipsis in webkit browsers. rest just cuts it off.

• Nathan: Using LESS, I had to change /* autoprefixer: off */ to /*! autoprefixer: off */ otherwise -webkit-box-orient: vertical; was getting removed after compilation which means the ellipsis never showed
• Esger: Using less and autoprefixer as a gulp task I had to set remove:false in the options list.. thank you @nathan

Answer 9

I'm not a JS pro, but I figured out a couple ways you could do this.

The HTML:

<p id="truncate">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi elementum consequat tortor et euismod. Nam commodo consequat libero vel lobortis. Morbi ac nisi at leo vehicula consectetur.</p>

Then with jQuery you truncate it down to a specific character count but leave the last word like this:

// Truncate but leave last word
var myTag = $('#truncate').text();
if (myTag.length > 100) {
 var truncated = myTag.trim().substring(0, 100).split(" ").slice(0, -1).join(" ") + "...";
 $('#truncate').text(truncated);
}

The result looks like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi
elementum consequat tortor et...

Or, you can simply truncate it down to a specific character count like this:

// Truncate to specific character
var myTag = $('#truncate').text();
if (myTag.length > 15) {
 var truncated = myTag.trim().substring(0, 100) + "...";
 $('#truncate').text(truncated);
}

The result looks like this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi
elementum consequat tortor et euismod...

Hope that helps a bit.

Here is the jsFiddle.

Answer 10

What a shame that you can't get it to work over two lines! Would be awesome if the element was display block and had a height set to 2em or something, and when the text overflowed it would show an ellipsis!

For a single liner you can use:

.show-ellipsis {
 overflow: hidden;
 text-overflow: ellipsis;
 white-space: nowrap;
}

For multiple lines maybe you could use a Polyfill such as jQuery autoellipsis which is on github http://pvdspek.github.com/jquery.autoellipsis/

• adi518: That plugin is way too heavy for what it does. It's 5 years old. Rather use dotdotdot mentioned in another post.

Answer 11

Sass helper mixin:

For those who are using a preprocessor like Sass, you could have a mixin with an optional parameter called lines which defaults to 1, this makes it very convenient to apply text truncation on an element, and change the number of lines when you need:

@mixin text-ellipsis($lines: 1) {
 text-overflow: ellipsis;
 overflow: hidden;
 @if ($lines > 1) {
 display: -webkit-box;
 -webkit-line-clamp: $lines;
 -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
 } @else {
 white-space: nowrap;
 }
}

Usage:

.some-title {
 @include text-ellipsis($lines: 2);
}

Answer 12

here is good example in pure css.

.container{
 width: 200px;
}
.block-with-text {
 overflow: hidden;
 position: relative; 
 line-height: 1.2em;
 max-height: 3.6em;
 text-align: justify; 
 margin-right: -1em;
 padding-right: 1em;
}
.block-with-text+.block-with-text{
 margin-top:10px;
}
.block-with-text:before {
 content: '...';
 position: absolute;
 right: 0;
 bottom: 0;
}
.block-with-text:after {
 content: '';
 position: absolute;
 right: 0;
 width: 1em;
 height: 1em;
 margin-top: 0.2em;
 background: white;
}

<div class="container">
<div class="block-with-text">
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
</div>
<div class="block-with-text">
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry
</div>
<div class="block-with-text">
Lorem Ipsum is simply
</div>
</div>

• Amin Abdolrezapoor: Pretty good solution , just it truncates texts even if the second line is too short to be truncated, but still , thumbs up

Answer 13

I have used the jQuery-condense-plugin before, which looks like it can do what you want. If not, there are different plugins that might suit your needs.

Edit: Made you a demo - note that I linked the jquery.condense.js on the demo which does the magic, so full credit to the author of that plugin :)

Answer 14

Pure css way of trim multiline text with ellipsis

Adjust text container's hight, control line to break by -webkit-line-clamp: 2;

.block-ellipsis {
 display: block;
 display: -webkit-box;
 max-width: 100%;
 height: 30px;
 margin: 0 auto;
 font-size: 14px;
 line-height: 1;
 -webkit-line-clamp: 2;
 -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
 overflow: hidden;
 text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

Answer 15

All the answers here are wrong, they missing important piece, the height

.container{
 width:200px;
 height:600px;
 background:red
}
.title {
 overflow: hidden;
 line-height: 20px;
 height: 40px;
 text-overflow: ellipsis;
 display: -webkit-box;
 -webkit-line-clamp: 2;
 -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
 }
<div class="container">
 <div class="title">this is a long text you cant cut it in half</div>
</div>

Answer 16

It is a non-standard CSS, which is not covered in current version of CSS (Firefox does not support it). Try to use JavaScript instead.

Answer 17

I've met this issue before, and there is no pure css solution

That's why i have developped a small library to deal with this issue (among others). The library provides objects to modelize and perform letter-level text rendering. You can for example emulate a text-overflow: ellipsis with an arbitrary limit (not necessary one line)

Read more at http://www.samuelrossille.com/home/jstext.html for screenshot, tutorial, and dowload link.

Answer 18

a pure css method base on -webkit-line-clamp, which works on webkit:

@-webkit-keyframes ellipsis {/*for test*/
 0% { width: 622px }
 50% { width: 311px }
 100% { width: 622px }
}
.ellipsis {
 max-height: 40px;/* h*n */
 overflow: hidden;
 background: #eee;
 -webkit-animation: ellipsis ease 5s infinite;/*for test*/
 /**
 overflow: visible;
 /**/
}
.ellipsis .content {
 position: relative;
 display: -webkit-box;
 -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
 -webkit-box-pack: center;
 font-size: 50px;/* w */
 line-height: 20px;/* line-height h */
 color: transparent;
 -webkit-line-clamp: 2;/* max row number n */
 vertical-align: top;
}
.ellipsis .text {
 display: inline;
 vertical-align: top;
 font-size: 14px;
 color: #000;
}
.ellipsis .overlay {
 position: absolute;
 top: 0;
 left: 50%;
 width: 100%;
 height: 100%;
 overflow: hidden;
 /**
 overflow: visible;
 left: 0;
 background: rgba(0,0,0,.5);
 /**/
}
.ellipsis .overlay:before {
 content: "";
 display: block;
 float: left;
 width: 50%;
 height: 100%;
 /**
 background: lightgreen;
 /**/
}
.ellipsis .placeholder {
 float: left;
 width: 50%;
 height: 40px;/* h*n */
 /**
 background: lightblue;
 /**/
}
.ellipsis .more {
 position: relative;
 top: -20px;/* -h */
 left: -50px;/* -w */
 float: left;
 color: #000;
 width: 50px;/* width of the .more w */
 height: 20px;/* h */
 font-size: 14px;
 /**
 top: 0;
 left: 0;
 background: orange;
 /**/
}

<div class='ellipsis'>
 <div class='content'>
 <div class='text'>text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text </div>
 <div class='overlay'>
 <div class='placeholder'></div>
 <div class='more'>...more</div>
 </div>
 </div>
</div>

Answer 19

No real easy way to do this. Use the Clamp.js library.

$clamp(myHeader, {clamp: 3});

Answer 20

If you use TailwindCSS - check line-clamp.

So you can use it as:

<div class="line-clamp-2 overflow-hidden text-ellipsis">
 This is some long text that will be truncated after two lines with an ellipsis at the end. The text will wrap to a second line if needed, but any additional lines will be hidden.
</div>

Answer 21

Late Reply but a html line-break works as well, so you can do a html + css only solution. So it's bad practice to usually use the br element, but if you break your comment with br the text-overflow ellipsis will start on the next line of the html text.

• Oliver Hnat: Please try including an example code with your answer

Answer 22

Try this click on url -------> [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/QMFQFPnZ.png

Answer 23

I found a solution however you need to know a rough character length that will fit in to your text area, then join a ... to the preceeding space.

The way I did this is to:

1. assume a rough character length (in this case 200) and pass to a function along with your text
2. split the spaces so you have one long string
3. use jQuery to get slice the first " " space after your character length
4. join the remaining ...

code :

truncate = function(description){
 return description.split('').slice(0, description.lastIndexOf(" ",200)).join('') + "..."; 
}

here is a fiddle - http://jsfiddle.net/GYsW6/1/