Limit text length for categories on homepage

[CarpetGuy]

Ok, let me see if I can explain my question a little better. In the tabber section for the featured posts, the text is limited to 275 I believe, but on the featured categories below, there is no limit, this is what I would like to change. I have set up a test site to learn this template http://wildwebdesigner.com/news/ I have inserted lorem ipsem text that is 469 words and 5 paragraphs. I tried using the "more" tag in the post, but it breaks the whole page and I end up with one long column intead of 2 below the featured post section. I have corrected this, but if you could take a look and advise me, I would appreciate it.