Design Text Truncation Rules

Content & UX Writing · microcopy, tables, hierarchy

Updated 2026-07-28

Decide what to cut based on where the meaning lives. Names of files and versioned items carry their difference at the end, so cutting the tail makes two different rows look identical.
Truncate in the middle when both ends matter, which is the right answer for file paths, long identifiers, and email addresses.
Never truncate to a single line by default when the content is a title. Two lines usually solve the problem without hiding anything.
Always make the full value reachable:

Do not truncate numbers, amounts, dates, or error messages. Cutting any of them changes the meaning rather than the length.
Let the layout absorb some variation before you cut. Flexible columns and wrapping fix more than a shorter string does.
Test with the worst real content you have, not with a sample. Long names, no spaces, other alphabets, and pasted text are the normal case in production.
Be careful with truncation in other languages. Text that fits in English is routinely thirty percent longer elsewhere, so a design that only just fits is already broken.

Truncation hides information, so it should be a deliberate rule per field rather than a default applied to every string.