How to trim content of element and put “…” if the characters go over a certain limit?

Question

I would like to trim a part of the if it is too long. This will make sure the table doesn\'t get messed up. All the data in the following table is re

Answer 1

Here's a function that will respect word boundaries (it won't split a word in half).

var maxLength = 30;

$('.shorten').each(function() {
    var text = $(this).text();

    if (text.length > maxLength) {
        var output =/^.{0,30}(?=[\.,; ])\b/.exec(text)[0]
        $(this).text(output + "...");
    }     
});