CSS Modern multi-line ellipsis

— 3 minute read


A while ago I wrote an article on truncating text with ellipsis, and we used a fail-safe version for the multi-line ellipsis.

Today I'm looking into a more modern and simple approach to solve this truncate problem.

The end result:

See the Pen CSS Modern multi-line ellipsis by Chris Bongers (@rebelchris) on CodePen.

HTML Structure permalink

The HTML for this assignment is super basic, we just need one big paragraph.

Morbi rutrum lectus turpis, sit amet sollicitudin eros condimentum vitae. Integer
consequat eros vel tortor tempor, et vulputate turpis pretium. Suspendisse vel metus
sem. Aenean sollicitudin luctus est ac gravida. Curabitur eros tellus, scelerisque sit
amet suscipit consequat, laoreet at quam. Nullam massa ante, tincidunt quis metus ut,
consequat facilisis risus. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient
montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

As you can imagine this is way bigger than just three lines right. Let's see how we can solve this in the modern-day and age.

CSS Truncate text on 3 lines permalink

To get right to it, we'll be using line-clamp to solve this. Line-clamp will allow us to state how many lines it should cut the text.

p {
width: 200px;
display: -webkit-box;
-webkit-line-clamp: 3;
-webkit-box-orient: vertical;
overflow: hidden;

As you may have spotted, for now, this only works if the display method is webkit-box.

So far this is by far the easiest way to achieve this, but has some odds and ends, like having to use the display format.

Browser support permalink

I actually was surprised the browser support for this is quite good. Most modern browsers support it out of the box.

CSS webkit-line-clamp

Thank you for reading, and let's connect! permalink
