Truncate text

A length below one is rejected with a clear invalid_input error so form validation and CI never treat a zero or negative cap as success.

What truncate with ellipsis means versus rewrite or trim

If it does not fit, the solver computes a content budget equal to length minus the ellipsis length, takes a prefix up to that budget, optionally backs up to the previous whitespace when word_boundary is true, strips trailing spaces from the kept prefix so the ellipsis does not sit after a dangling gap, and concatenates the ellipsis.

How to call the API and what the response contains

Send a JSON body with required text (aliases input, value, string, s, content, and body) and required length (aliases max_length, max, n, limit, and max_len). Length must be an integer from one through one hundred thousand inclusive; values below one, non-integers, and oversize limits are invalid_input. Optional word_boundary (aliases word, soft, on_word) defaults to false and accepts boolean true or false. Optional ellipsis (aliases suffix, ending, marker) defaults to three ASCII dots and may be any string up to thirty-two characters; when truncation is required the ellipsis must not be longer than length or the request fails rather than inventing a clipped marker. Text must stay within one hundred thousand characters so a single request cannot exhaust Worker or browser memory. On success the response echoes input as the original string, text as the final string to display, length as the requested maximum, original_length and result_length as character counts, truncated as a boolean, word_boundary as the flag you sent (or default), ellipsis as the suffix used, used_word_boundary when a soft cut was applied, and message as a short English summary. Failed validation—missing text or length, a non-string text, a non-integer or sub-one length, an oversize payload, or an ellipsis that cannot fit under the limit when a cut is needed—returns invalid_input and is never charged. Pricing is a flat $0.002 per successful request with unit item and zero marginal unit price.

Practical tips, limits, and related searches

Use this capability when the search intent is truncate text, add ellipsis at max length, or soft-cut on a word boundary online. Custom ellipsis such as a single Unicode horizontal ellipsis character or a bracketed more label works when its length still fits inside the budget. This landing is not an AI summarizer, not a paragraph or word counter, not a title-case converter, and not a trimmer of line edges only. Round-trip checks for tests are easy: feed a long sentence with length twenty and expect truncated true and result_length at most twenty; enable word_boundary on a multi-word phrase and expect the last kept character not to sit inside a word when a space existed earlier; send length zero or a negative integer and expect invalid_input mentioning length below one. Prefer a hard cut when you need a fixed character grid such as monospace logs; prefer word_boundary for human-facing titles and previews where mid-word breaks look broken. Prefer text.shorten when you need meaning-preserving compression under a word budget with a language model; prefer str.trim_lines when you only need per-line whitespace cleanup; prefer this capability when the product already decided a hard maximum display length and must show a faithful prefix. Failed tasks that return invalid_input do not consume prepaid balance, which keeps form validation and CI negative tests cheap. When teaching reviewers, show the same sentence under hard and soft modes so they see that only the cut position and used_word_boundary flag change while the ellipsis rule stays the same.