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"Today in the news, MySQL previews..."

As a "preview" of text, this MySQL select will return the first few words out of a text field in a database. It returns entire words (doesn't cut them off in the middle) and follows the last word with an elipse "..."

In the PHP, assign $CharactersToDisplay to a number - the approximate number of characters desired (or you can hard-code it if you want).

For the example, I also use $TheID as the row identity for the record to display.