Setting a max character length in CSS

Question

You could always use a truncate method by setting a max-width and overflow ellipsis like this

p {
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  max-width: 200px;
}

An example:

.wrapper {
  padding: 20px;
  background: #eaeaea;
  max-width: 400px;
  margin: 50px auto;
}

.demo-1 {
  overflow: hidden;
  display: -webkit-box;
  -webkit-line-clamp: 3;
  -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
}

.demo-2 {
  overflow: hidden;
  white-space: nowrap;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  max-width: 150px;
}

<div class="wrapper">
  <p class="demo-1">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Ut odio temporibus voluptas error distinctio hic quae corrupti vero doloribus optio! Inventore ex quaerat modi blanditiis soluta maiores illum, ab velit.</p>
</div>

<div class="wrapper">
  <p class="demo-2">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Ut odio temporibus voluptas error distinctio hic quae corrupti vero doloribus optio! Inventore ex quaerat modi blanditiis soluta maiores illum, ab velit.</p>
</div>

For a multi-line truncation have a look at a flex solution. An example with truncation on 3 rows.

p {
  overflow: hidden;
  display: -webkit-box;
  -webkit-line-clamp: 3;
  -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
}

An example:

p {
  white-space: nowrap;
  overflow: hidden;
  text-overflow: ellipsis;
  max-width: 200px;
}

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Deserunt rem odit quis quaerat. In dolorem praesentium velit ea esse consequuntur cum fugit sequi voluptas ut possimus voluptatibus deserunt nisi eveniet!</p>

There is a CSS 'length value' of ch.

From MDN

This unit represents the width, or more precisely the advance measure, of the glyph '0' (zero, the Unicode character U+0030) in the element's font.

This may approximate what you are after.

p {
  overflow: hidden;
  max-width: 75ch;
}

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Deserunt rem odit quis quaerat. In dolorem praesentium velit ea esse consequuntur cum fugit sequi voluptas ut possimus voluptatibus deserunt nisi eveniet!Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur
  adipisicing elit. Dolorem voluptates vel dolorum autem ex repudiandae iste quasi. Minima explicabo qui necessitatibus porro nihil aliquid deleniti ullam repudiandae dolores corrupti eaque.</p>

Try this for truncating characters after setting it to max-width. I have used 75ch in this case

p {
    white-space: nowrap;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;
    max-width: 75ch;
}

<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin nisi ligula, dapibus a volutpat sit amet, mattis etc. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin nisi ligula, dapibus a volutpat sit amet, mattis etc.</p>

For multiline truncating, please follow the link.

An example: https://codepen.io/srekoble/pen/EgmyxV

We will be using webkit css for this. In short WebKit is a HTML/CSS web browser rendering engine for Safari/Chrome. This may be brower specific as every browser is backed by a rendering engine to draw the HTML/CSS web page.

example code:

.limited-text{
    white-space: nowrap;
    width: 400px;
    overflow: hidden;
    text-overflow: ellipsis;
}

<p class="limited-text">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Ut odio temporibus voluptas error distinctio hic quae corrupti vero doloribus optio! Inventore ex quaerat modi blanditiis soluta maiores illum, ab velit.</p>

    

With Chrome you can set the number of lines displayed with "-webkit-line-clamp" :

     display: -webkit-box;
    -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
    -webkit-line-clamp: 3;  /* Number of lines displayed before it truncate */
     overflow: hidden;

So for me it is to use in an extension so it is perfect, more information here: https://medium.com/mofed/css-line-clamp-the-good-the-bad-and-the-straight-up-broken-865413f16e5

That's not possible with CSS, you will have to use the Javascript for that. Although you can set the width of the p to as much as 30 characters and next letters will automatically come down but again this won't be that accurate and will vary if the characters are in capital.