---
title: truncate
# linktitle: truncate
description: Truncates a text to a max length without cutting words or leaving unclosed HTML tags.
date: 2017-02-01
publishdate: 2017-02-01
lastmod: 2017-02-01
categories: [functions]
menu:
  docs:
    parent: "functions"
keywords: [strings]
signature: ["truncate SIZE INPUT", "truncate SIZE ELLIPSIS INPUT"]
workson: []
hugoversion: 19
relatedfuncs: []
deprecated: false
---

Since Go templates are HTML-aware, `truncate` will intelligently handle normal strings vs HTML strings:

```
{{ "<em>Keep my HTML</em>" | safeHTML | truncate 10 }}` → <em>Keep my …</em>`
```

{{% note %}}
If you have a raw string that contains HTML tags you want to remain treated as HTML, you will need to convert the string to HTML using the [`safeHTML` template function](/functions/safehtml) before sending the value to truncate. Otherwise, the HTML tags will be escaped when passed through the `truncate` function.
{{% /note %}}