css ellipsis on second line

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 ... 

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>

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.

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

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;

As others have already answered, a pure CSS solution does not exists. There is a [jQuery][1] plugin that is very easy to use, it is called [dotdotdot][2]. It uses the container's width and height to calculate if it needs to truncate and add ellipsis.

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

Here is a [jsFiddle][3].

[1]: http://jquery.com/ "jQuery" [2]: http://dotdotdot.frebsite.nl/ [3]: http://jsfiddle.net/qEsQf/

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.

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.

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.

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)

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/

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>

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 :)

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;
}

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.

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>

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.

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);
}

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>

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

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

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.

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/