cut text after (x) amount of characters

Question

This is in wordpress (not sure that makes a difference)

This bit of php outputs the post title

Answer 1

if(count($data['nameofpost']) > 20)
{
    echo(substr($data['nameofpost'], 0, 17)."...");
}

For $data['nameofpost'] greater then 20 chars it will output the first 17 plus three dots ....