Formatting text with liquid syntax - Ortto Knowledge Base

Overview

Ortto allows you to use Liquid template language in your email, SMS, and push notifications. This gives you powerful tools to format text, clean up data, and adjust values dynamically before they’re shown to contacts.

By combining merge tags with Liquid filters, you can standardize names, format numbers and phone fields, safely display HTML, and build cleaner, more personalized messages without manual edits.

Learn more about personalizing campaign content with Liquid.

Working with text formatting

Liquid includes a wide range of text filters that help you control how content appears. You can adjust capitalization, add or remove text, shorten long strings, or normalize inconsistent data.

Common examples include:

Capitalizing or uppercasing names
Appending domains or email suffixes
Truncating long text for previews
Removing extra whitespace or line breaks

These filters are especially useful when contact data is inconsistent or user-generated.

Description	Format	Example Output	Notes
Prepend text	{{ people.custom.domain \| prepend: "https://www." }}	https://www.domain.com	Adds the string to the start of the value.
Append text	{{ people.first-name \| append: "@email.com" }}	lauren@email.com	Adds the string to the end of the value.
Capitalize	{{ people.first-name \| capitalize }}	Jerry	Uppercases the first character and lowercases the rest.
Lowercase	{{ "Jerry" \| downcase }}	jerry	Converts all characters to lowercase.
Uppercase	{{ "Jerry" \| upcase }}	JERRY	Converts all characters to uppercase.
Normalize name	{{ people.first-name \| downcase \| capitalize }}	Ortto	Fixes names in all caps or all lowercase.
Reverse	{{ ".ottrO morf olleH" \| split: "" \| reverse \| join: "" }}	Hello from Ortto	Reverses characters or array order.
Truncate text	{{ "Hello from Ortto!" \| truncate: 9 }}	Hello ...	Limits characters and adds ellipsis.
Truncate words	{{ "Hello from Ortto!" \| truncatewords: 1 }}	Hello ...	Limits word count and adds ellipsis.

Cleaning and transforming data

You can use Liquid to clean up strings and arrays before displaying them. This includes removing unwanted characters, deduplicating lists, and stripping HTML or newlines from content.

Common use cases include:

Removing duplicate values from a list
Stripping HTML tags from text fields
Removing specific words or characters

These transformations help ensure your messages stay readable and correctly formatted across channels.

Description	Format	Example Output	Notes
Remove all matches	{{ "Customer journeys made remarkable" \| remove: "ma" }}	Customer journeys de rerkable	Removes every occurrence of the text.
Remove first match	{{ "Customer journeys made remarkable" \| remove_first: "ma" }}	Customer journeys de remarkable	Removes only the first occurrence.
Replace all	{{ "An update on my order" \| replace: "my", "your" }}	An update on your order	Replaces every matching string.
Replace first	{{ "My order and my total" \| replace_first: "my", "your" }}	Your order and my total	Replaces only the first match.
Strip HTML	{{ "Have you signed up?" \| strip_html }}	Have you signed up?	Removes all HTML tags.
Escape HTML	{{ " Content " \| escape }}	<div>Content</div>	Escapes HTML so it displays as text.
Escape once	{{ " Content " \| escape_once }}	<div>Content</div>	Prevents double-escaping existing entities.
Remove newlines	{{ "Line 1\nLine 2" \| strip_newlines }}	Line 1Line 2	Deletes all line breaks.
Newlines to <br>	{{ "Line 1\nLine 2" \| newline_to_br }}	Line 1<br />Line 2	Converts line breaks to HTML <br />.

Whitespace control

This table shows how to remove unwanted whitespace from text or field values.

Description	Format	Example Output	Notes
Trim both sides	{{ " Hello " \| strip }}	Hello	Removes whitespace from both sides.
Trim left	{{ " Hello " \| lstrip }}	"Hello "	Removes whitespace from the left side only.
Trim right	{{ " Hello " \| rstrip }}	" Hello"	Removes whitespace from the right side only.

Working with arrays and lists

Liquid can be used to work with arrays created from strings or existing fields. You can split strings into arrays, select the first or last item, remove duplicates, and join values back together with custom separators.

This is helpful when:

Displaying lists of locations, products, or tags
Selecting a single value from a longer list
Reformatting comma-separated data into readable text

Description	Format	Example Output	Notes
Split	{% assign varcities = "London, New York, Milan" \| split: ", " %} {% for item in varcities %} {{ item }} {% endfor %}	London New York Milan	Splits a string into an array.
Join array	{% assign varcities = "London, New York" \| split: ", " %} {{ varcities \| join: " and " }}	London and New York	Combines array values using a separator.
First item	{{ "Hello from Ortto" \| split: " " \| first }}	Hello	Returns the first array item or character.
Last item	{{ "Hello from Ortto" \| split: " " \| last }}	Ortto	Returns the last array item or character.
Remove duplicates	{% assign varMy_Products = "hats, scarves, scarves, shoes" \| split: ", " %} {{ varMy_Products \| uniq \| join: ", " }}	hats, scarves, shoes	Deduplicates array values.
Compact array	{{ array \| compact }}	[1, "apple", true]	Removes nil values and returns a new array.

Safe handling of HTML and URLs

When working with content that may include HTML or special characters, Liquid provides filters to safely escape or clean the output. You can escape HTML so it displays as text, remove tags entirely, or encode and decode URLs as needed.

This is useful when:

Preventing broken layouts caused by HTML
Passing values safely through URLs

Description	Format	Example Output	Notes
MD5 hash	{{ "email" \| md5 }}	7f2cb18d2b4f7a8f65b4f1cdadbbb5c9	Converts a string into an MD5 hash value.
URL decode	{{ "'Hello%21'+from+Ortto" \| url_decode }}	Hello!' from Ortto	Decodes URL-encoded strings.
URL encode	{{ "lauren@email.com" \| url_encode }}	lauren%40email.com	Encodes unsafe URL characters