Kun X antal ord ud af MySQL

<?
$txt = "Dette er en nyhed der højest må vise 10 ord, og det er så det dette script gør";
$exp = explode(" ",$txt);
for ($a=0;$a<10;$a++)
{
    echo $exp[$a]." ";
}
echo "...<a href='link.php'>Læs mere</a>";
?>

Hvis du lader MYSQL klare det hele,så:
mysql_query("SELECT SUBSTRING(dinLangeTekst,0,15) AS kortTekst FROM tabel");

Læs mere om substring her: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/string-functions.html

SUBSTRING(str,pos)  , SUBSTRING(str FROM pos) , SUBSTRING(str,pos,len)  , SUBSTRING(str FROM pos FOR len)

The forms without a len argument return a substring from string str starting at position pos. The forms with a len argument return a substring len characters long from string str, starting at position pos. The forms that use FROM are standard SQL syntax. Beginning with MySQL 4.1, it is possible to use a negative value for pos. In this case, the beginning of the substring is pos characters from the end of the string, rather than the beginning. A negative value may be used for pos in any of the forms of this function.