Text Truncator guide
Limit text by Unicode characters or word count and add a configurable ending only when needed.
What this tool does
The Text Truncator shortens a passage to a selected maximum. Character mode counts Unicode code points rather than UTF-16 storage units, which prevents many emoji and non-BMP characters from being split into invalid halves. Word mode identifies Unicode letter-and-number words, keeps the original text through the final allowed word, trims trailing space, and adds the chosen suffix.
If the original is already within the limit, the output remains unchanged and no suffix is added. The status reports the original unit count and whether truncation occurred. A suffix can be an ellipsis, three periods, a short continuation label, or empty text. The result is available for copying and TXT download.
This tool is useful for drafting excerpts, previews, test data, labels, and fields with approximate limits. It does not understand a platform’s byte limits, database encoding, HTML markup, sentence boundaries, search-snippet generation, or visual line width. Combining marks and multi-code-point emoji sequences can still contain several counted code points even when they look like one symbol.
How to use it
- Paste the source text.
- Choose word or Unicode-character mode.
- Enter a whole-number maximum from 1 to 100,000.
- Set the suffix, or clear it for a hard cut.
- Truncate and verify the output against the destination’s actual rules.
For public previews, consider ending at a sentence manually after using the tool. For APIs or databases, confirm whether the documented maximum uses bytes, code points, grapheme clusters, or UTF-16 units.
Benefits
- Supports both word and Unicode code-point limits
- Adds the suffix only when shortening occurs
- Preserves original punctuation through the final retained word
- Clearly reports whether the source exceeded the limit
- Provides copy and UTF-8 download actions
- Processes the passage locally
Counting limitations
Character counts can differ from visible symbols, bytes, and application-specific counters. Word segmentation is a general Unicode pattern and may not match every language’s writing system. The destination’s official validator remains authoritative.