Applying an ellipsis to multiline text

Question

Is there a solution to add ellipsis on last line inside a div with a fluid height (20%)?

I found the -webkit-line-clamp function in CSS, but in my case the line number will be depending on window size.

p {
    width:100%;
    height:20%;
    background:red;
    position:absolute;
}

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla sed dui felis. Vivamus vitae pharetra nisl, eget fringilla elit. Ut nec est sapien. Aliquam dignissim velit sed nunc imperdiet cursus. Proin arcu diam, tempus ac vehicula a, dictum quis nibh. Maecenas vitae quam ac mi venenatis vulputate. Suspendisse fermentum suscipit eros, ac ultricies leo sagittis quis. Nunc sollicitudin lorem eget eros eleifend facilisis. Quisque bibendum sem at bibendum suscipit. Nam id tellus mi. Mauris vestibulum, eros ac ultrices lacinia, justo est faucibus ipsum, sed sollicitudin sapien odio sed est. In massa ipsum, bibendum quis lorem et, volutpat ultricies nisi. Maecenas scelerisque sodales ipsum a hendreritLorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla sed dui felis. Vivamus vitae pharetra nisl, eget fringilla elit. Ut nec est sapien. Aliquam dignissim velit sed nunc imperdiet cursus. Proin arcu diam, tempus ac vehicula a, dictum quis nibh. Maecenas vitae quam ac mi venenatis vulputate. Suspendisse fermentum suscipit eros, ac ultricies leo sagittis quis. Nunc sollicitudin lorem eget eros eleifend facilisis. Quisque bibendum sem at bibendum suscipit. Nam id tellus mi. Mauris vestibulum, eros ac ultrices lacinia, justo est faucibus ipsum, sed sollicitudin sapien odio sed est. In massa ipsum, bibendum quis lorem et, volutpat ultricies nisi. Maecenas scelerisque sodales ipsum a hendrerit.</p>

I have this JSFiddle to illustrate the issue. https://jsfiddle.net/96knodm6/

Answer 1

If you want to apply ellipsis (...) to a single line of text, CSS makes that somewhat easy with the text-overflow property. It's still a bit tricky (due to all the requirements – see below), but text-overflow makes it possible and reliable.

If, however, you want to use ellipsis on multiline text – as would be the case here – then don't expect to have any fun. CSS has no standard method for doing this, and the workarounds are hit and miss.

Ellipsis for Single Line Text

With text-overflow, ellipsis can be applied to a single line of text. The following CSS requirements must be met:

• must have a width, max-width or flex-basis
• must have white-space: nowrap
• must have overflow with value other than visible
• must be display: block or inline-block (or the functional equivalent, such as a flex item).

So this will work:

p {
  width: 200px;
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  display: inline-block;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  border: 1px solid #ffffd;
  margin: 0;
}

<p>
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>. 
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>. 
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>. 
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>.
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>.
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>.
</p>

jsFiddle version

BUT, try removing the width, or letting the overflow default to visible, or removing white-space: nowrap, or using something other than a block container element, AND, ellipsis fails miserably.

One big takeaway here: text-overflow: ellipsis has no effect on multiline text. (The white-space: nowrap requirement alone eliminates that possibility.)

p {
    width: 200px;
    /* white-space: nowrap; */
    height: 90px; /* new */
    overflow: hidden;
    display: inline-block;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;
    border: 1px solid #ffffd;
    margin: 0;
}

<p>
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>. 
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>. 
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>. 
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>.
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>.
  This is a test of CSS <i>text-overflow: ellipsis</i>.
</p>

jsFiddle version

---

Ellipsis for Multiline Text

Because CSS has no property for ellipsis on multiline text, various workarounds have been created. Several of these methods can be found here:

• jQuery dotdotdot...
• Line Clampin’ (Truncating Multiple Line Text)
• CSS Ellipsis: How to Manage Multi-Line Ellipsis in Pure CSS
• A pure CSS solution for multiline text truncation

Answer 2

Please check this css for ellipsis to multi-line text

body {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 50px;
}

/* mixin for multiline */
.block-with-text {
  overflow: hidden;
  position: relative;
  line-height: 1.2em;
  max-height: 6em;
  text-align: justify;
  margin-right: -1em;
  padding-right: 1em;
}
.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;
}

<p class="block-with-text">The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massivelyuseful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of  Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon;  use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.</p>

Answer 3

To bad CSS doesn't support cross-browser multiline clamping, only webkit seems to be pushing it.

You could try and use a simple Javascript ellipsis library like Ellipsity on github the source code is very clean and small so if you do need to make any additional changes it should be quite easy.

https://github.com/Xela101/Ellipsity

Answer 4

After looking all over the internet and trying a lot of these options, the only way to make sure that it is covered correctly with support for i.e is through javascript, i created a loop function to go over post items that require multi line truncation.

*note i used Jquery, and requires your post__items class to have a fixed max-height.

// loop over post items
$('.post__items').each(function(){
    var textArray = $(this).text().split(' ');
    while($(this).prop('scrollHeight') > $(this).prop('offsetHeight')) {
        textArray.pop();
        $(this).text(textArray.join(' ') + '...');
     }
});

Answer 5

This man have the best solution. Only css:

.multiline-ellipsis {
    display: block;
    display: -webkit-box;
    max-width: 400px;
    height: 109.2px;
    margin: 0 auto;
    font-size: 26px;
    line-height: 1.4;
    -webkit-line-clamp: 3;
    -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

Answer 6

I have just been playing around a little bit with this concept. Basically, if you are ok with potentially having a pixel or so cut off from your last character, here is a pure css and html solution:

The way this works is by absolutely positioning a div below the viewable region of a viewport. We want the div to offset up into the visible region as our content grows. If the content grows too much, our div will offset too high, so upper bound the height our content can grow.

HTML:

<div class="text-container">
  <span class="text-content">
    PUT YOUR TEXT HERE
    <div class="ellipsis">...</div> // You could even make this a pseudo-element
  </span>
</div>

CSS:

.text-container {
    position: relative;
    display: block;
    color: #838485;
    width: 24em;
    height: calc(2em + 5px); // This is the max height you want to show of the text. A little extra space is for characters that extend below the line like 'j'
    overflow: hidden;
    white-space: normal;
}

.text-content {
  word-break: break-all;
  position: relative;
  display: block;
  max-height: 3em;       // This prevents the ellipsis element from being offset too much. It should be 1 line height greater than the viewport 
}

.ellipsis {
  position: absolute;
  right: 0;
  top: calc(4em + 2px - 100%); // Offset grows inversely with content height. Initially extends below the viewport, as content grows it offsets up, and reaches a maximum due to max-height of the content
  text-align: left;
  background: white;
}

I have tested this in Chrome, FF, Safari, and IE 11.

You can check it out here: http://codepen.io/puopg/pen/vKWJwK

You might even be able to alleviate the abrupt cut off of the character with some CSS magic.

EDIT: I guess one thing that this imposes is word-break: break-all since otherwise the content would not extend to the very end of the viewport. :(