The text-overflow property requires the white-space property set to nowrap text-overflow - CSS: Cascading Style Sheets | MDN (mozilla.org)
the three properties text-overflow white-space and overflow should be applied to the element that holds the text not its container
In your case, they should be applied to the p elements
when i do that - when I apply them all to p - what happens is - I have only first line of sentence showing. so it doesnt match whole visible div box but cuts immediately after first line of sentence , which is, of course, undesirable for me.