Some experimentation with the text-overflow property.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<body>
<div style="border: 1px solid red; max-width: 400px; overflow:hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis;">
<nobr>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum ac libero nec est luctus aliquam. Nulla sodales, dolor a consectetur volutpat, elit mi convallis sem, at ornare ligula odio non metus. </nobr>
</div>
</body>
</html>
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<body>
<div style="border: 1px solid red; max-width: 400px; overflow:hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis;">
<nobr>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum ac libero nec est luctus aliquam. Nulla sodales, dolor a consectetur volutpat, elit mi convallis sem, at ornare ligula odio non metus. </nobr>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Firefox 3.5
Safarai 4
IE 7