title: ASP.NET C# Truncate
body: <p>I have the following content stored inside a database column:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.&lt;/p&gt;
  &lt;p&gt;Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.&lt;/p&gt;
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  <p>It is displayed using the following: <code>&lt;%= m.article %&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>What I would like to do is strip out the <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> tags and then only show say 40 characters and end it with ... so that I would end up with something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat...
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  <p>I remember reading that using <code>Html.Encode</code> would strip the HTML tags, but not 100% sure about that, and not sure how to combine this with a way of truncating the content to 40 characters. If someone could help me with this that'd be awesome. Thanks.</p>