Well this is a script I wrote, what it does is chop up long words with malicious meaning into several parts. This way, a chat in a table will not get stretched anymore.

<?php

function text($string,$limit=20,$chop=10){

$text = explode(" ",$string);
while(list($key, $value) = each($text)){
    $length = strlen($value);
    if($length >=20){
        for($i=0;$i<=$length;$i+=10){
            $new .= substr($value, $i, 10);
            $new .= " ";
        }
         $post .= $new;
    }
    elseif($length <=15){
        $post .= $value;
    }
    $post .= " ";
}
return($post);
}

// for example, this would return:
$output = text("Well this text doesn't get cut up, yet thisssssssssssssssssssssssss one does.", 10, 5);

echo($output); // "Well this text doesn't get cup up, yet thiss sssss sssss sssss sssss sss one does."
?>

I hope it was useful.. :)