Hi,

Does anyone know of an easy way to clean up descriptions? Better yet, this is a title issue that I have...Meaning the titles are inside an sql database table in which I can change the length of, but that will also change the layout of my homepage because the titles are displayed in table where if the length is greater than 34 characters in length, the title will wrap to the next line. I don't want wrapping to take place. So basically I want to make it so that the title text is 34 characters or less, but I want it to be 'understandable'...Meaning the title is also the 'alt' text for the thumbnails, so I want the title to be as descriptive as possible without loosing any words or if it needs to be cut short, (keeping in mind not less than 34 characters due to the table the title get's placed in) still readable...

Here would be an example: ( Note all text is different )

Description:

Large Painting Of A Bird In The Wilderness

I want to cut the above description to no more than 34 characters in length so the above description would be:

Large Painting Of A Bird In The Wi

Note: That includes the spaces as well.

How could that description (when cut down to 34 characters or less) still be made in 'English'? Meaning I guess the point to this whole post would be that I want to make the title field in my database cut short to no more than 34 characters in lenght, BUT the title MUST make sense. Not cut short. Is there an easy way to do that? Without having to modify each title one by one.

HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM TRYING TO GET AT.

Thank you in advance!
-Brian

If you're using PHP, just do something like this:

PHP Code:

<?php echo substr($row['title'], 0, 34); ?>

Given these parameters

so I want the title to be as descriptive as possible without loosing any words or if it needs to be cut short, (keeping in mind not less than 34 characters due to the table the title get's placed in) still readable...

How could that description (when cut down to 34 characters or less) still be made in 'English'? Meaning I guess the point to this whole post would be that I want to make the title field in my database cut short to no more than 34 characters in lenght, BUT the title MUST make sense. Not cut short. Is there an easy way to do that? Without having to modify each title one by one.

No!

I mean how can you shorten something with either loosing words. You either cut off the ends, or cut out a mid section. Either way it probably won't make sense.
Unless you want to create a AI engine that understands language constructs, semantics and syntax it won't be happening

You could cut out common words such as 'a' 'in' the' 'of' 'or' etc. It wouldn't guarentee it to be less than 34 characters and it might not make total sense. But the key words will still be there.

Try using simple descriptions and then capitalize. BigRedCars, SmallBlueCar, LeafyElmTree, WiltingFlower, BloomingFlower.

You could ust name a few replace statements in a separate file(titletrimmer.php) and then

PHP Code:

<title><?php 
if ($title > 34){
include('titletrimmer.php');
}ELSE{
echo $title;};?></title>
$title='My large title with lots of large words';//35 charactors
str_ireplace('$array1','$array2',$title);//array2[0] replaces array1[0]
//this will replace all strings matching 'common words' I would try of, the, at, in, a 
$caps=ucword($title);//capitalize first letter of each word
$title=str_replace(' ','',$caps);//replaces all spaces with no space notice no ireplace just replace
$title=substr($do,0,34);//trims to 34 if it is higher
echo $title;

MyBigTitleBigWords //18 charactors

That should work since a text string is converted into a numerical value when you use a mathematical comparator like, greater than. I hope that helps. if not you might try converting words into chat shorthand.
str_ireplace('eight,ate','8',$title); You can use arrays for the first two values. If the first array(search for) is longer than the second array(replace with) a blank value will be used. You must use str_ireplace before ucwords() and str_replace(). This is because str_ireplace() converts all text to lowercase then searches for matching string.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.str-ireplace.php