WordPress | Trim the excerpt

trimmed_excerpt.php

<?php
$excerpt = get_the_excerpt();
$char_limit = 110;
$excerpt_stripped = strip_tags( $excerpt ); // Remove any tags using the strip_tags function.
$excerpt_length = strlen( $excerpt_stripped ); // Now lets count the characters so we can compare
if ( $excerpt_length > $char_limit ) { // Now work out if we need to trim the character length.
    $offset = $char_limit - $excerpt_length; // This gives us a negative value.
    $position = strrpos( $excerpt_stripped, ' ', $offset ); // This starts looking for a space backwards from the offset
    $trimmed_excerpt = substr( $excerpt_stripped, 0, $position ); // Trim up until the point of the last space.
    $last_character = substr( $trimmed_excerpt, -1 ); // Identify the last character of the newly trimmed excerpt
    echo $trimmed_excerpt;
    if ( $last_character != '.' ) {
        // If the string ends with a full-stop we don't want to add an ellipsis
        echo '&hellip;';
    }
} else {
    echo $excerpt_stripped; // The excerpt must be less than the char_limit so lets just print it.
}
?>

Overhauled in January 2018.

There's also a function version right here