I installed android SDK and plugin on eclipse 4.4, and LogCat shows only the first letter from each message.
an screenshot:
The settings that worked for me are the following:
ddms.logcat.auotmonitor.level=error
ddms.logcat.automonitor=true
ddms.logcat.automonitor.userprompt=true
eclipse.preferences.version=1
logcat.view.colsize.Application=169
logcat.view.colsize.Level=54
logcat.view.colsize.PID=54
logcat.view.colsize.Tag=198
logcat.view.colsize.Text=676
logcat.view.colsize.Time=156
~/workspace/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.runtime/.settings/com.android.ide.eclipse.ddms.prefs