You want X lines of text. Anything after that, gracefully cut off. That’s “line clamping” and it is a perfectly legit desire. When you can count on text being a certain number of lines, you can create stronger and more reliable grids from the elements that contain that text, as well as achieve some symmetric aesthetic harmony.
There are a couple of ways to get it done, none of them spectacular.
If you are doing Web Design/Development as a full-time and aren’t reading CSS-Tricks, you really should be. Awesome little tricks like this one..