Limit post title lenght in loop

i’m trying to limit the title lenght of my posts in the custom loops i made with Ele Custom Skin.

I’ve tried using the following script that i found in a related thread here on StackExchange, but to no avail:

function max_title_length( $title ) {
    $max = 20;

    if ( in_the_loop() && strlen( $title ) > $max ) {
        return substr( $title, 0, $max ) . ' …';  
    } else {
        return $title;
    }
}
add_filter( 'the_title', 'max_title_length' );

What am i missing?

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