How do I truncate titles?

How about get_the_title()? That should return the value rather than echo it…

There’s a filter hook for titles called ‘the_title’. That means all you need is to adapt a truncating PHP function, like the one here: https://www.the-art-of-web.com/php/truncate/
and add it to the filter, like so:

add_filter(‘the_title’,’some_truncating_function’);

Try this code to truncate to the length you want:

<?php
$tit = the_title('','',FALSE);
echo substr($tit, 0, 51);
if (strlen($tit) > 51) echo " ...";
?>

Change the numbers 51 to whatever length you want.

Thank you, a combination of get_the_title() and jbbrwcky’s solution worked.