I think @neil’s change is probably enough to solve the problem on my site. Here’s today’s new examples from mandrill on my site. Two long titles that would have been made less appealing with the former truncate length. Note the title is now going over to 4 lines which is a bit much for mobile but I can live with it as a compromise. For most sites this won’t be an issue because people use shorter titles as a rule.
Thanks @codinghorror @neil @sam for your generosity here and willingness to talk this through and make a compromise fix for us. Much appreciated. 
