A quick and dirty way to create a blurb for a text string:
$_blurb_length = 5;
if ( str_word_count($text) > $_blurb_length && preg_match('%(\w+\s){'.$_blurb_length.'}%i', $text, $_BLURB) )
{
$blurb = rtrim($_BLURB[0]) . '...';
}
else
{
$blurb = $text;
}