To reduce required display space, a text segment is reduced in size by successively eliminating portions of the text segment and by reducing a size of text of the text segment and/or a spacing between characters of the text segment. The reduction is thus visually represented in a step-wise manner, and recognizability of the text segment is maintained, even if the final representation of the text does not carry a full meaning and/or is not independently comprehensible, because of the impression left in the mind of the user by the step-wise reduction of the text segment. The reduction may be animated.